In re the Estate of Garfield

Although I feel that lack of timeliness in demanding a jury is an insuperable obstacle to appellant’s position, a more serious and pervasive error in the decision about to be handed down concerns the place of jury trials in accounting proceedings in the Surrogate’s Court.

Section 68 of the Surrogate’s Court Act, requiring jury trials in Surrogate’s Court proceedings when constitutionally necessary, was in no way intended to broaden the availability of such a right to encompass accounting proceedings in which juries had never been used. When the predecessor (Code Civ. Pro., § 2538) of the…