Key Points

  • The Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed a New York County Supreme Court order denying The Group US Management LLC's CPLR 2304 petition to quash or modify the geographic scope of the Attorney General's non-judicial subpoena and granting the Attorney General's cross-motion to compel.
  • The court held the requests for documents about online reviews for out-of-state restaurants bear a reasonable relationship to the investigation and the public interest, because they could show the New York LLC used New York-based entities to facilitate deceptive-review transactions, and its agent used .nyc email addresses to communicate with customers.
  • The court held the Attorney General may enforce Executive Law § 63(12) and General Business Law § 349 on behalf of out-of-state residents when entities use New York addresses to complete deceptive transactions.
  • The petitioner failed to show the futility of the process to uncover anything legitimate was inevitable or obvious, and the court distinguished Matter of People v Sirius XM Radio Inc. (2025) because it was unclear the requests would yield only transactions with no New York connection.

A New York appeals court ruled on Tuesday that Attorney General Letitia James can demand documents about online reviews for restaurants outside New York as part of an investigation into deceptive reviews, rejecting a restaurant company's bid to limit her office's subpoena to in-state locations.

A five-justice panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed a Manhattan trial court ruling that denied The Group US Management LLC's petition to quash or narrow the subpoena and granted the attorney general's cross-motion to compel compliance. In a brief, unsigned decision, the panel held that the out-of-state records were fair game because the "information sought bears a reasonable relationship to the subject matter under investigation and the public interest to be served," a standard it drew from a 1987 First Department case.

The ruling gives the attorney general's office appellate backing to pursue records of conduct beyond New York's borders at the investigative stage when the target has ties to the state. The panel pointed to the company's status as a New York limited liability company, its use of New York-based entities and an agent's use of ".nyc" email addresses, and it distinguished a 2025 First Department decision involving Sirius XM Radio Inc.

The demand at issue was a non-judicial subpoena duces tecum issued by the attorney general's office. Group US petitioned under CPLR 2304 to quash or modify it. The company sought to change the subpoena's geographic scope by excluding documents concerning online reviews for its restaurants outside New York.

Justice David B. Cohen of State Supreme Court in Manhattan denied the petition in an order and judgment entered March 25, 2026, and ordered the company to comply. The First Department reviewed that ruling "to the extent appealed from" and affirmed it without costs. The panel consisted of Justices Mendez, who presided, Rodriguez, Pitt-Burke, Rosado and O'Neill Levy.

The appellate court said the disputed requests reached material with a plausible New York link even though the restaurants involved were elsewhere. The documents, the panel wrote, "could foreseeably uncover evidence that petitioner, a New York limited liability company, used New York-based entities to facilitate transactions concerning deceptive online reviews even for its out-of-state restaurants." It added that some of those out-of-state restaurants "were incorporated under New York addresses."

The panel also cited the company's communications with customers. "Furthermore, petitioner's agent used email addresses with a .nyc top level domain name, indicating a New York location, to communicate with customers concerning deceptive reviews," the court wrote.

Those facts mattered because of the statutes the attorney general is enforcing. The panel held that "the Attorney General may enforce Executive Law § 63(12) and General Business Law § 349 on behalf of out-of-state residents when entities use New York addresses to complete deceptive transactions," citing a 2009 First Department decision in a case against H & R Block Inc. and a 2003 Third Department decision in a case against Telehublink Corp.

Based on the company's connections to New York, the panel held, it could not be said that "the futility of the process to uncover anything legitimate is inevitable or obvious," language it quoted from its 2020 decision in Matter of Libre by Nexus Inc. v. Underwood.

The panel set this case apart from its 2025 ruling in Matter of People v. Sirius XM Radio Inc. Unlike in that matter, the court wrote, "the procedural posture of this case makes it unclear that the subpoena requests will yield evidence consisting exclusively of transactions with no connection to New York." The decision did not further describe the Sirius XM case.

The decision did not find that every out-of-state document would turn out to involve New York. It held only that, at this stage, the company had not shown that the out-of-state requests were certain to produce nothing tied to the state. That uncertainty was enough to defeat the challenge to the subpoena's geographic reach.

The decision did not describe what the attorney general's investigation has found so far, identify the restaurants by name or location, or indicate whether any enforcement action has been filed against the company.

Lawyers for Group US included Wayne E. Gosnell of Clayman Rosenberg Kirshner & Linder LLP. The attorney general's office was represented by Anthony R. Raduazo.

The affirmance leaves in place the trial court's order compelling Group US to comply with the subpoena, including the requests covering its restaurants outside New York. The decision, 2026 NY Slip Op 05754, is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.