"By any standard it would be unusual behavior for an appellate court to reach and determine an issue never presented in a litigation, and to do so without providing an opportunity for the adversely affected parties to be heard on a question which they had no{**61 AD3d at 83} reason to believe was part of the litigation" (Grant v Cuomo, 130 AD2d 154, 176 [1987], affd 73 NY2d 820 [1988]).
"These principles are not mere technicalities, nor are they only concerned with fairness to litigants, important as that goal is. They are at the core of the distinction between the Legislature, which may spontaneously change the law whenever it perceives a public need, and the courts which can only announce the [*20]law when necessary to resolve a particular dispute between identified parties. It is always tempting for a court to ignore this restriction and to reach out and settle or change the law to the court's satisfaction, particularly when the issue reached is important and might excite public interest. However, it is precisely in those cases that the need for judicial patience and adherence to the common-law adversarial process may be—or is often greatest" (Lichtman v Grossbard, 73 NY2d 792, 794-795 [1988]).
For my colleagues to adopt a new and supposedly more liberal standard for determining liability under the City's Human Rights Law and to abandon the present, supposedly unduly restrictive, "severe or pervasive" standard in favor of one that "is most faithful to the uniquely broad and remedial purposes of the local statute," without any input from the parties concerned, flies in the face of these well settled principles.