Judge rejects gallery owner's bid for a default win in assault lawsuit

A Brooklyn judge refused to give gallery owner Projjal Dutta an automatic win in an assault lawsuit, ruling that the claims Dutta brought against his accuser did not require a formal response because his legal team never explicitly labeled them as counterclaims.  

Justice Aaron D. Maslow denied Dutta's request for a default judgment in a decision dated May 18 and filed the next day, court records show. Dutta had argued he was entitled to win because Harry Hutchison, who sued him, never replied to the claims Dutta raised in his answer.

Under New York law, claims a defendant brings back against a plaintiff require a reply only if they are labeled "counterclaims." Maslow found that Dutta's answer never used the word.

"Based on a plain reading of CPLR 3011, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it is not properly denominated as such, then it is not a duck," Maslow wrote.

A default judgment lets one side win because the other failed to respond in time. Maslow called it "a drastic and extreme remedy" and said other factors weighed against granting it, including that Hutchison's failure to reply was not deliberate and that courts prefer to decide cases on their merits.

The dispute stems from an April 11, 2025, confrontation on the second floor of 35 Great Jones Street in Manhattan, where the two men's gallery businesses share space. Urgent Matter previously reported that Hutchison sued Dutta in October 2025 in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, the state's trial court, accusing him of assault and battery.

In his answer, Dutta denied the allegations and brought his own claims against Hutchison, saying Hutchison assaulted him and made false reports to police that led to Dutta's arrest on April 14, 2025, court records show.

Dutta described those claims as assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, abuse of process, malicious prosecution and false arrest.

Dutta argued he had properly served the answer by filing it electronically and that Hutchison's time to respond expired on December 11, 2025, court records show.

Hutchison countered that the claims were never identified as counterclaims—not in the document's title, section heading, or the state's electronic filing system, where Dutta filed an "Answer" rather than an "Answer with Counter-Claim(s)."

In the answer, Dutta grouped the claims under a heading describing his "factual claims" against Hutchison, court records show.

An earlier ruling had already narrowed the case. Maslow dismissed Dutta's gallery, Aicon Contemporary, as a defendant in January, finding the complaint did not explain how the alleged assault was tied to the gallery's business, records show.

Separately, the assault lawsuit is unfolding alongside a broader, bitter legal war between Projjal and his brother Prajit Dutta over the rights to the "Aicon" name, which expanded earlier this year to include explosive allegations that Aicon Contemporary offered forged artworks by Indian modernists.

Follow along with other lawsuits at Urgent Matter's art lawsuit tracker.