§ 106.Civil and criminal prosecutions not merged.

Some conduct breaks the law twice over — it injures a person and also violates the criminal code. CPLR 106 answers a question that could otherwise cause real confusion: does pursuing one remedy use up the other? The section says no. A civil claim and a criminal prosecution arising from the same conduct exist independently, and pursuing one doesn't merge it into, or foreclose, the other.

The rule has old roots — it traces back through New York's nineteenth-century procedural codes to a similar provision in the Field Code. Its purpose lines up with a distinction that runs through the rest of Article 1: civil and criminal proceedings serve different ends. A criminal case punishes an offense against the public; a civil case compensates a private wrong. Because those goals differ, letting one run its course doesn't need to interfere with the other, and a party doesn't have to guess which route to take first.

In practice, this section is why a crime victim can bring a personal-injury or fraud claim regardless of whether the state charges, convicts, or even prosecutes the same conduct criminally — and why a criminal conviction doesn't substitute for the separate civil remedy a plaintiff needs to pursue for damages.