§ 434. Contracts for publication of reports. 1. The printing and publication of the court of appeals reports, the appellate division reports, the miscellaneous reports and the combined official series shall be done under contract as hereinafter provided. 2. Said contract shall be let and said publication shall be made by and under the direction of the state reporter. 3. In each year immediately preceding the expiration of the contract to be let as hereinafter provided, the state reporter shall give notice that a contract will be let for said printing and publication, together with a reference to this section, and that on or before the first day of April in such year, the state reporter will receive sealed proposals for such contract. Such notice shall be given beginning in the first week of January in the procurement opportunities newsletter published by the commissioner of economic development pursuant to section one hundred forty-two of the economic development law. 4. Said contract shall be let to the person who will publish and sell said reports and said combined official series, together with the weekly advance sheets thereof, and furnish the required copies to the various state and county officials, on terms deemed by said state reporter most advantageous to the public and the state, regard being had to the proper execution of the work. Said contract shall be let not earlier than the first of May, nor later than the first of June, in such years. 5. (a) Said contract shall require the contractor to continue to publish such reports and the combined official series thereof (with weekly advance sheets thereof to be published as early as practicable after the decisions of said courts shall be handed down), and shall fix the prices at which said publications and each of them, in the various styles of binding and weights and quality of paper, and the sizes and the number of pages of each, shall be delivered within the state of New York.

(b) Said contract also shall provide that the contractor may produce and market such reports and the combined official series thereof in any medium or format, besides bound volumes and printed advance sheets, including but not limited to microfiche, ultrafiche, on-line computer retrieval data base, and CD-ROM (compact disc-read only memory), subject to prior approval by the state reporter and the chief judge of the court of appeals. 6. Said contract shall require the contractor to furnish the state library with fifty-eight copies of the court of appeals and appellate division reports and three copies of the miscellaneous reports, and also to furnish copies of each of said publications as follows: One of each to the clerk of each county, for the use of the county; one of each to the attorney general, for the use of his office; one of each to the state comptroller, for the use of his office; one of each to the clerk of the court of appeals, for the use of that court, and one of each to each judge or justice of a court of record, for the use of his office; and one of each to the various public law libraries in the state, and the expense of delivery thereof shall be borne by the state. 7. Publication under said contract shall commence on the first day of January, nineteen hundred and forty-one, and shall continue until December thirty-first, nineteen hundred and forty-five (unless said contract is previously annulled by the state reporter); thereafter said contracts shall be made for the period of five years each. 8. Said contractor shall agree that he will promptly after the publication of each volume of said reports, and constantly thereafter, keep the same on hand for open and public sale, and will deliver the same, complete, bound and lettered, to any and to all persons desiring to purchase, at a price for each which shall be fixed by said contract. 9. Said contract shall contain such other provisions as in the judgment of the state reporter may be necessary to safeguard the interests of the state and of the public, and shall be subject to the approval of the chief judge of the court of appeals. The form of the proposed contract complete as to all its terms, except the prices to be paid the contractor, shall be prepared by the state reporter and be placed on file in the office of the law reporting bureau on or before the day of the first publication of notice under subdivision three of this section. 10. To every proposal there shall be annexed a bond executed by the proposed contractor, with sureties conditioned for the faithful performance of said contract, which bond shall be approved as to form, manner of execution, amount and sufficiency of sureties, by the chief judge of the court of appeals. 11. The right to reject any and every proposal if deemed unfavorable or disadvantageous is reserved to the state reporter, and the state reporter may readvertise until bids advantageous to the state and to the public have been secured. 12. If the state reporter determines that a contract has not been faithfully kept and performed by the contractor, or whenever in the judgment of the state reporter the public interest may so require, of which the state reporter shall be exclusive judge and his decision shall be final, the state reporter may, by an instrument in writing signed by him and approved by the chief judge of the court of appeals and filed in the office of the secretary of state, modify said contract in the interest of justice, or annul said contract from a time specified in said instrument and thereupon immediately enter into a new contract likewise to be approved by the chief judge of the court of appeals. 13. Neither the state reporter nor any of his deputies nor any of the employees of the law reporting bureau shall have any pecuniary interest in said reports or said contracts. 14. Nothing provided in this article shall affect the obligation of any contracts for the printing and publication of the aforementioned reports, or any of them, in force on July first, nineteen hundred thirty-eight; but the state reporter shall succeed to all the powers, rights and interests with respect to said contracts, possessed by the previous official reporters or board of reporters by whom said contracts were let.