Appeal from a judgment of the District Court of Suffolk County, First District (Maurice T. McElligott, J.H.O.), entered August 12, 2011. The judgment, after a nonjury trial, imposed a $50 civil liability upon defendant as the owner of a vehicle which had failed to stop at a red light.

ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed, without costs.

This action was commenced to impose civil liability upon defendant as the owner of a vehicle which had been recorded by a traffic-control signal monitoring device failing to comply with a traffic-control indicator in violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111-b (see also Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111 [d]). It was alleged that defendant's vehicle did not stop at a red light at a specified location on October 22, 2010.

Prior to trial, defendant served discovery demands upon plaintiff which sought, among other things, information concerning the persons or companies that administer, operate and install the cameras for the red-light program. Defendant moved to compel plaintiff to respond thereto, but the District Court denied the motion.

At a nonjury trial, the People entered into evidence a series of photographs depicting defendant's vehicle, the red light involved, and the location of the violation in question, as well as a video of the events charged in this matter. Additionally, the People entered into evidence a [*2]technician's certificate certifying the violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111 (d). The technician stated therein that he had inspected the recorded images and that they are true and accurate copies of the recorded images he had reviewed on October 27, 2010 depicting the motor vehicle in question failing to stop at a red light. Defendant did not deny that he was the owner of the vehicle or that the vehicle had been driven through the red light. Following trial, the District Court imposed a $50 civil liability upon defendant.

The various discovery demands by defendant were neither requests to discover information regarding the defense that the traffic-control indicators were malfunctioning (Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111-b [o]) nor material and necessary to the defense of the action. "It is incumbent on the party seeking disclosure to demonstrate that the discovery sought will result in the disclosure of relevant evidence or is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of information bearing on the claims, and unsubstantiated bare allegations of relevancy are insufficient to establish the factual predicate regarding relevancy" (Crazytown Furniture v Brooklyn Union Gas Co., 150 AD2d 420, 421 [1989] [citations omitted]; see Foster v Herbert Slepoy Corp., 74 AD3d 1139, 1140 [2010]). We find that the District Court did not improvidently exercise its discretion in denying defendant's motion to compel discovery.

Pursuant to Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111-b (d), the technician's certificate constituted prima facie evidence of the violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1111 (d), which evidence defendant failed to rebut.

We have reviewed defendant's remaining contentions and find them to be without merit.

Accordingly, the judgment is affirmed.

Nicolai, P.J., and Marano, J., concur.

LaSalle, J., taking no part.
Decision Date: July 08, 2013