AD HOC COMMITTEE ON JUD. ADM. v. Commonwealth of Mass.

• Decision Date: 30 March 1973
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 72-3331-M.
• Citation: 358 F. Supp. 953
• Parties: AD HOC COMMITTEE ON JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION, an unincorporated association of Massachusetts attorneys and residents; and Carmen Dicostanzo, an Individual, Plaintiffs, v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

358 F. Supp. 953

AD HOC COMMITTEE ON JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION, an unincorporated association of Massachusetts attorneys and residents; and Carmen Dicostanzo, an Individual, Plaintiffs, v. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 72-3331-M.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts,

March 30, 1973.

Harold Brown, Boston, Mass., for plaintiffs.

Lawrence T. Bench, Asst. Atty. Gen., Commonwealth of Mass., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM

FRANK J. MURRAY, District Judge.

The court is requested in this case to grant relief to plaintiffs based on allegations of the complaint that defendants have failed to provide judicial manpower and adequate court facilities in the courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts such as to undermine the judicial process, and thus bring about violations of the speedy trial proviso of the Sixth Amendment, and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The defendants are the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the General Court of the Commonwealth which "is empowered to enact legislation", and Francis W. Sargent in his capacity as Governor of the Commonwealth who "has the authority to approve legislation enacted by the General Court and to appoint judges".

The plaintiffs are (1) an unincorporated association of attorneys, presumably confederated together for the purpose of this case, who represent parties in civil and criminal cases pending in the courts of the Commonwealth, and (2) an elderly plaintiff in a civil tort action pending in the Superior Court for the County of Worcester. They purport to represent a class consisting of "all persons in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" as well as six subgroups named in the complaint.¹

Plaintiffs bring the complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (federal question) and § 1343 (civil rights). Injunctive and declaratory relief is sought for alleged deprivations of rights secured to the plaintiffs by the United States Constitution. The defendants have moved to dismiss the complaint on various grounds.² Certain averments—lack of jurisdiction of the subject matter, and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted—will be considered as matter of law, taking the allegations of the complaint well pleaded as true.

I

The allegations are that defendants have failed to provide court facilities, judges, clerical personnel, and other facilities reasonably necessary to protect the plaintiffs' federal constitutional rights; that persons charged with crime have been unable to obtain a speedy trial without fault on their part; that parties to civil litigation are required to wait at least two years without a trial without fault on their part, and thus are denied due process of law; that due to court congestion the plaintiff attorneys have been deprived of a forum in which to exercise professional responsibilities to their clients and the public, causing a substantial confiscation of their opportunity to survive economically; that persons of moderate means and of advanced years are economically less able to withstand the attritional effect of delays to the advantage of persons of wealth; that such disadvantaged persons suffer economic loss or physical deprivations while awaiting a "meaningful opportunity to be heard".³

It is appropriate to note that the deprivations of federal constitutional rights are alleged to result not from actions authorized or pursued under any statute of the Commonwealth, but rather from certain usages and practices permitted to exist affecting plaintiffs as a result of the continuing failure of the defendants to provide remedies or relief to enable the judiciary to fulfill its obligations under the Constitution of Massachusetts. No injunction is sought to restrain the enforcement, execution or operation of any statute of the Commonwealth,⁴ nor is this court requested to declare any statute unconstitutional. No relief is sought for any particular plaintiff in any pending case in the state court on the ground that court is depriving such plaintiff of his federal constitutional rights.

The specific relief sought is that the defendants be ordered to provide for additional court facilities, more judges and clerical employees, and related facilities, and "to implement such programs with adequate funding, all of which is to be performed with reasonable expedition". Additionally, there are prayers that this court "fashion all other orders which may be deemed necessary and appropriate to resolve the judicial crisis" in the state courts, and to retain jurisdiction of the case "in order to supervise the fulfillment of its decrees".

The main arguments of the defendants, as it appeared to the court from their brief and oral argument, are (1) that the complaint fails to raise any substantial federal question or claim upon which relief can be granted, and (2) that the action against defendants is barred by the Eleventh Amendment.

III

The allegations of the complaint must present a substantial justiciable federal question; otherwise, there being no other basis of subject-matter jurisdiction, the complaint must be dismissed. Ex parte Poresky, 290 U.S. 30, 54 S.Ct. 3, 78 L.Ed. 152 (1933); Brown v. Dunne, 409 F.2d 341, 344 (7th Cir. 1969). It is argued by the plaintiffs that the issue presented by the complaint is not whether an individual charged with a crime, or an aged and indigent civil litigant, has in fact been prejudiced, but rather whether there is denial of such access to the Commonwealth's courts due to congestion of the dockets as to result generally in impermissible consequences under the requirements of due process of law, equal protection of the laws, and speedy trial in criminal cases. On this tender of the issues the inquiry is whether there is thus presented a case "arising under" the Federal Constitution, the laws of the United States, or within the specifically enumerated categories of cases under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution; and beyond this, if jurisdiction is found, the further question whether the subject matter is appropriate for judicial consideration, that is, whether the case is justiciable.

While the court does have jurisdiction of the case under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 because the claim is alleged to arise under the Constitution, the complaint does not state a justiciable cause of action.

IV

In Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970), in giving the opinion of the Court, Justice Harlan said:

Congress included customs and usages within its definition of law in . . . § 1983 because of the persistent and widespread discriminatory practices of state officials in some areas of the post-bellum South. As Representative Garfield said: "Even where the laws are just and equal on their face, yet, by a systematic maladministration of them, or a neglect or refusal to enforce their provisions, a portion of the people are denied equal protection under them." Although not authorized by written law, such practices of state officials could well be so permanent and well settled as to constitute a "custom or usage" with the force of law.

This interpretation of custom recognizes that settled practices of state officials may, by imposing sanctions or withholding benefits, transform private predilections into compulsory rules of behavior no less than legislative pronouncements.

Id. at 167-168, 90 S.Ct. at 1613-1614. The Court held in that case that "a `custom or usage, of a State' for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 must have the force of law by virtue of the persistent practices of state officials". Id. at 167, 90 S.Ct. at 1613. It follows that unless it can be found that the inaction of the Massachusetts legislature to relieve against undue delay in the courts amounts to a "custom, or usage of a State", the plaintiffs have no justiciable cause of action.

Looking at the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the instances where relief has been granted under them against state officials, the court cannot say there may never be a situation where persistent legislative inaction, by withholding the manpower and facilities necessary to enable the judiciary to function promptly and fairly to administer justice in the courts, would not be found to be such a settled practice as to have the force of law for the purposes of relief under section 1983. As Justice Frankfurter wrote:

It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of "laws" to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it. Settled state practice . . . can establish what is state law. The equal protection clause did not write an empty formalism into the Constitution. Deeply embedded traditional ways of carrying out state policy . . . are often tougher and truer law than the dead words of the written text.

Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. v. Browning, 310 U.S. 362, 369, 60 S.Ct. 968, 972, 84 L.Ed. 1254 (1940).

There is a difference, of course, between official inaction in the sense of neglecting or failing to enforce laws already on the books, and "inaction implicit in the failure to enact corrective legislation". See Adickes v. Kress & Co., supra at 168, n. 39, 90 S.Ct. at 1614. Even if this court could find that the legislative inaction complained of here was within the scope of section 1983, that section protects only rights, privileges, aud immunities secured by the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs have not shown that any of the alleged deprivations of rights claimed by them are traditionally protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Under that Amendment the speedy trial provisions of the Sixth Amendment are made binding on the States. The speedy trial proviso, however, imposes no obligation upon the States to fashion procedural rules to prevent or ameliorate undue delay in criminal cases...