Cass v. State
Decision Date | 05 August 1982 |
Docket Number | No. 3,No. 2,No. 1,1,2,3 |
Citation | 88 A.D.2d 305,453 N.Y.S.2d 951 |
Parties | Willard W. CASS, Jr., et al., Respondents-Appellants, v. STATE of New York et al., Appellants-Respondents. (Action) Raymond E. ALDRICH et al., Respondents-Appellants, v. STATE of New York et al., Appellants-Respondents. (Action) Arthur J. ABRAMS et al., Respondents-Appellants, v. STATE of New York et al., Appellants-Respondents. (Action) |
Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Paul A. Feigenbaum, Albany, for Herbert B. Evans, appellant-respondent.
Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen., Albany , for Edward V. Regan and another, appellants-respondents.
Gordon & Schechtman, P. C., New York City (Murray A. Gordon, New York City, of counsel), for respondents-appellants.
Before SWEENEY, J. P., and MAIN, MIKOLL, YESAWICH and WEISS, JJ.
Involved herein are cross appeals arising out of three declaratory judgment actions brought by 116 named plaintiffs, all of whom presently hold or in the past have held the position of Family, County and/or Surrogate Court Judge. Defendants are the State of New York, the Chief Administrator of the Courts of the State of New York, Herbert B. Evans, and the Comptroller of the State of New York, Edward V. Regan. In their respective actions plaintiffs seek, inter alia, declarations that, pursuant to the Unified Court Budget Act (L.1976, ch. 966; Judiciary Law, § 39) and subsequent related legislative enactments (L.1979, ch. 55; Judiciary Law, art. 7-B; L.1980, ch. 881), they have been unconstitutionally deprived of higher salaries which were received by judges of courts of coordinate jurisdiction performing similar duties in other areas of the State and declarations that they are entitled to receive retroactive salary increments from April 1, 1977, the date upon which salaries determined in accordance with the Unified Court Budget Act went into effect. Since the facts and matters at issue in the three actions are essentially identical, they were consolidated for purposes of argument and decision at Special Term and will be treated in similar fashion by this court, 109 Misc.2d 107, 442 N.Y.S.2d 1005.
Examining each of the three actions individually, we find that plaintiffs in Action No. 1 are or have been Surrogates residing in various counties across the State with their salaries varying from county to county. Concededly, the compensation paid these Surrogates for their judicial services has, at all material times since April 1, 1977, been less than the compensation paid to the Surrogates in Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties and the counties in New York City, with the salary differential in some instances exceeding $12,000 per year. 1 With regard to plaintiffs in Action No. 2 and Action No. 3, they are or have been, respectively, County Court Judges and Family Court Judges from many different counties in the State who, since April 1, 1977, have been receiving annual salaries as much as $12,000 less than their counterparts in Nassau County, 2 and they, as do the Surrogates in Action No. 1, challenge the cited disparities in salaries and assert that the unequal compensation paid to judges of courts of coordinate jurisdiction performing similar duties does not pass constitutional muster.
Special Term, after granting summary judgment in favor of the Comptroller dismissing the complaints as against him, granted summary judgment to plaintiffs against the remaining defendants to the extent of declaring the Unified Court Budget Act (L.1976, ch. 966; L.1979, ch. 55; L.1980, ch. 881) unconstitutional insofar as its provisions require that plaintiffs be paid lower salaries than other judges of the same courts performing similar duties. The court based its ruling upon the ground that the subject statutory provisions violated the equal protection clauses of the Federal and State Constitutions, and it further declared that plaintiffs were entitled to retroactive salary increments from April 1, 1977 to correct the salary disparities which resulted from the enactment of the Unified Court Budget Act. The present cross appeals ensued.
Prior to our reaching the merits of these actions, we initially find that the court erred on two procedural matters when it dismissed the complaints as against the Comptroller and refused to dismiss the complaints as against the State. Both the Comptroller and the Chief Administrator of the Courts are public officers charged by plaintiffs with making allegedly unconstitutional disbursements of State funds pursuant to the Unified Court Budget Act, and, such being the case, they are proper defendants in these declaratory judgment actions (State Finance Law, § 123-b). With regard to the State, however, no persuasive authority has been cited to demonstrate that it is a proper defendant in these actions. It has long been well settled that the State is immune from any suit except where it has specifically consented thereto by express constitutional or legislative enactment (see Psaty v. Duryea, 306 N.Y. 413, 118 N.E.2d 584). Accordingly, the complaints as against the State should be dismissed, a result of little practical consequence since the two State officers remain as parties defendant, and any recoveries of money damages by plaintiffs as a result of rights declared herein must necessarily await separate actions against the State in the Court of Claims (see Matter of Adams v. New York State Civ. Serv. Comm., 51 A.D.2d 668, 378 N.Y.S.2d 171).
Turning now to the substantive issues presented, we cannot agree with the conclusion of Special Term that plaintiffs' rights under the equal protection clauses of the Federal and State Constitutions were violated by the determination and payment of plaintiffs' salaries in accordance with the provisions of the Unified Court Budget Act. Although plaintiffs have shown some inequalities in the salary classifications of Family, County and Surrogate Judges across the State, it must be remembered that such classifications need not be mathematically exact or perfect (Montgomery v. Daniels, 38 N.Y.2d 41, 378 N.Y.S.2d 1, 340 N.E.2d 444) and that legislation can withstand an equal protection challenge "if any state of facts reasonably may be conceived to justify it" (McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 426, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 1105, 6 L.Ed.2d 393). In the present instance, even the report of the Chief Administrator of the Courts to the Legislature, upon which Special Term relies in its decision, concedes that "statistics indicate a degree of correlation between population, caseload and compensation" received by the various judges, and there are obviously other variables, such as disparities in the cost of living across the State, which might conceivably provide justification for the differences in judicial salaries. Significantly, the United States Supreme Court has affirmed a holding in Kavanagh v. Brown, 206 F.Supp. 479, affd. 371 U.S. 35, 83 S.Ct. 143, 9 L.Ed.2d 112, to the effect that there is no denial of equal protection where members of the same court are paid disparate salaries. In short, it does not appear from this record that a salary classification based upon population, caseload or cost of living impedes the governmental objective of creating a unified court system (Matter of Abrams v. Bronstein, 33 N.Y.2d 488, 492, 354...
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