Appeal from an order of the District Court of Nassau County, First District (Sondra K. Pardes, J.), dated December 18, 2006. The order denied plaintiff's motion for summary judgment.

Order reversed without costs and plaintiff's motion for summary judgment granted.

Plaintiff law firm brought the instant action for $11,646,60 in attorney's fees against defendant, a former client whom plaintiff had represented in a matrimonial action. Plaintiff subsequently moved for summary judgment, and defendant opposed. The court below denied plaintiff's motion on the ground that plaintiff failed to comply with Code of Professional Responsibility (22 NYCRR) § 1400.3, which requires an attorney in a domestic relations matter to provide his or her client with information concerning fee arbitration in the event of a dispute regarding the attorney's fee. This appeal by plaintiff ensued.

Although the court below found that there was noncompliance with the aforementioned regulation, the court apparently failed to notice that defendant, in his verified answer, admitted that plaintiff complied with the regulation. Since the fact of compliance was affirmatively admitted by defendant in his answer, it constituted a conclusive formal judicial admission by defendant, which was binding upon the parties (Prince, Richardson on Evidence § 8-215 [Farrell 11th ed]). The issue was therefore not in controversy, and it was error for the court to deny plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on this basis.

With respect to the merits of plaintiff's motion for summary judgment, we note that the "receipt and retention of plaintiff's accounts, without objection within a reasonable time, and agreement to pay a portion of the indebtedness, [gives] rise to an actionable account stated, thereby entitling plaintiff to summary judgment in its favor" (Shea & Gould v Burr, 194 AD2d [*2]369 [1993]). In our opinion, plaintiff established its prima facie right to judgment as a matter of law upon proof that defendant received and retained, without objection, the invoices that plaintiff sent to him seeking payment for professional services rendered (Thaler & Gertler v Weitzman, 282 AD2d 522 [2001]). In opposition, defendant failed to raise a triable issue of fact because he did not provide any written documentation or evidentiary proof to support his claim that he objected to the invoices, and failed to identify persons with whom he allegedly disputed the fees (see e.g. Levisohn, Lerner, Berger & Langsam v Gottlieb, 309 AD2d 668 [2003]; Greenspan & Greenspan v Wenger, 294 AD2d 539 [2002]). "A defendant's self-serving, bald allegations of oral protests [are] insufficient to raise a triable issue of fact as to the existence of an account stated" (Darby & Darby v VSI Intl., 95 NY2d 308, 315 [2000]). In the instant case, defendant's vague allegation that he "voiced concerns" regarding plaintiff's bills was inadequate to defeat plaintiff's motion for summary judgment.

Rudolph, P.J., Molia and Scheinkman, JJ., concur.
Decision Date: March 25, 2008