§ 104.Construction.

CPLR 104 sets the interpretive lens for the entire code: courts must construe the CPLR liberally, with an eye toward resolving every civil case justly, quickly, and cheaply. It borrows that three-part goal directly from Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, language that had already proven its worth by guiding federal courts toward practical readings of procedural rules instead of rigid, technical ones.

The section also quietly drops an older doctrine. Procedural codes that replaced the common law used to carry a rule of “strict construction” — courts were told to read any statute that changed common-law practice narrowly, only as far as its text plainly required. New York's drafters concluded that instruction fought against the liberal-construction principle instead of complementing it, so CPLR 104 keeps only the broader command and drops the narrower one.

In practice, this section gives judges room to look past a technical misstep — the wrong caption, a missing formality, an ambiguous filing — and resolve disputes on their merits. It works alongside CPLR 103(c), which lets a court correct the wrong form of proceeding instead of dismissing it, and CPLR 105(d), which defines the “civil judicial proceeding” to which this liberal-construction command applies.