Appeal from a judgment of the Civil Court of the City of New York, Queens County (Jodi Orlow, J.), entered September 11, 2011. The judgment, after a nonjury trial, dismissed the complaint.

ORDERED that the judgment is affirmed, without costs.

Plaintiff commenced this action to recover damages from defendant law firm, which had brought a landlord-tenant proceeding on her behalf. At a nonjury trial, plaintiff testified that while she had been represented by defendant, plaintiff and her tenant had entered into a so-ordered stipulation of settlement which, among other things, required the tenant to vacate the premises by September 20, 2009. The stipulation also contained a provision which forbade the parties from harassing each other. Plaintiff asserted that the latter provision had been added after she had signed the stipulation and that she would not have signed the stipulation had she seen it because that provision effectively prevented her from gaining access to the premises. Plaintiff also contended that, because defendant had failed to provide her with certain documentation, she was unable to have the city marshal execute a warrant of eviction until late November 2009, several months after her tenant was to have vacated the premises. Plaintiff admitted that, after she had entered into the stipulation, she had told defendant that she no longer required defendant's services, and that defendant had then provided her with a list of marshals whom she could retain in order to execute the warrant of eviction. After trial, the Civil Court awarded [*2]defendant judgment dismissing the complaint.

It is clear from plaintiff's testimony that she no longer sought defendant's services after September 4, 2009, when the stipulation was entered into and the judgment obtained. The discharge of an attorney of record automatically terminates the attorney's authority to act in the case, and an attorney who is discharged by a client cannot be held liable for subsequent events which have no connection to his or her prior conduct (see 6A NY Jur 2d, Attorneys at Law § 69).

Although plaintiff contends that the Civil Court did not consider the documents which she had offered at trial in support of her arguments, the record indicates that the Civil Court reviewed the documents that plaintiff had submitted to it and then returned them to her at the end of the trial. Any documents not considered were those which constituted hearsay, or which the Civil Court found to be collateral or irrelevant to the claims asserted against defendant. As plaintiff did not demonstrate that defendant was responsible for the damages she had allegedly sustained, the Civil Court did not err in dismissing the complaint.

Accordingly, the judgment is affirmed.

Pesce, P.J., Weston and Solomon, JJ., concur.
Decision Date: October 01, 2013