5 New York Civil Practice: CPLR P 3020.00

Summary

A verification is a written statement that asserts the truth of allegations in a pleading. Prior to an amendment effective December 21, 2024, the statement needed to be made “under oath.” The amendment provides instead that the statement be “subscribed and affirmed to be true under the penalties of perjury in accordance with” CPLR 2106, recently amended to permit an affirmation by any person. See ¶ 2106 above. Because effective sanction for false verification is lacking, most pleadings are drafted by lawyers not litigants, and modern pleading rules allow hypothetical and inconsistent pleading of facts intended to be proved, verification has been rightly criticized as a bothersome anachronism.1 As a general rule, verification is optional with the pleader, but there are a few situations in which it is mandatory. When a pleading is verified each subsequent pleading in the action must be verified,2 though this rule is itself subject to two exceptions: (1) ...