Jones v. Beame

• Decision Date: 13 July 1978
• Citation: 45 N.Y.2d 402,408 N.Y.S.2d 449,380 N.E.2d 277
• Parties: , 380 N.E.2d 277 Helen E. JONES, Individually and as President of the Society for Animal Rights, Inc., as Chairman of the Citizens for Animals, and as Guardian for all animals now confined in the Queens, Prospect Park and Central Park Zoos, et al., Appellants, v. Abraham D. BEAME, Individually and as Mayor of the City of New York, et al., Respondents. Richard J. BOWEN, as City Manager of the City of Long Beach, et al., Respondents, v. STATE BOARD OF SOCIAL WELFARE of the State of New York et al., Appellants.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 449

408 N.Y.S.2d 449

45 N.Y.2d 402, 380 N.E.2d 277

Helen E. JONES, Individually and as President of the Society

for Animal Rights, Inc., as Chairman of the Citizens for

Animals, and as Guardian for all animals now confined in the

Queens, Prospect Park and Central Park Zoos, et al., Appellants, v. Abraham D. BEAME, Individually and as Mayor of the City of

New York, et al., Respondents.

Richard J. BOWEN, as City Manager of the City of Long Beach,

et al., Respondents,

v.

STATE BOARD OF SOCIAL WELFARE of the State of New York et

al., Appellants.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 13, 1978.

Henry Mark Holzer, P. C., Mount Kisco, for appellants in the first above-entitled action.

Allen G. Schwartz, Corporation Counsel, New York City (Renee Modry and Leonard Koerner, New York City, of counsel), for respondents in the first above-entitled action.

Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen. (A. Seth Greenwald and Samuel A. Hirshowitz, New York City, of counsel), for appellants in the second above-entitled action.

Joel M. Lutwin, Corp. Counsel (Gail A. Shields, New York City, of counsel), for respondents in the second above-entitled action.

OPINION OF THE COURT

BREITEL, Chief Judge.

These two appeals share a common quality: in each the plaintiffs would embroil the courts in the administration of programs the primary responsibility for which lies in the executive branch of government. In each the courts are obliged to decline the invitation. Accepting the responsibility would violate the constitutional scheme for the distribution of powers among the three branches of government and involve the judicial branch in responsibilities it is ill-equipped to assume.

In the Jones appeal plaintiffs are private persons and organizations concerned with the inadequate, and therefore cruel, treatment of animals, as a result of fiscal crisis, in municipal zoos in the City of New York in violation of applicable statutes. They seek declaratory and injunctive relief against the municipal officials charged with ultimate responsibility for operation of the zoos. As the appeal reaches this court, all of the causes of action in the amended complaint have been dismissed on motion either for legal insufficiency or lack of standing (see CPLR 3211, subd. (a)).

In the Bowen appeal plaintiffs, the City of Long Beach and its city manager, are concerned with the premature placement in private homes and hotels of mental patients discharged into the community in violation of applicable law. They seek declaratory and injunctive relief against the State departments charged with responsibility for the care and treatment of the mentally ill on the assertions that the patients, while still mentally ill, were discharged into the community in excessive numbers and without adequate supervision. As the appeal reaches this court, the complaint has been sustained on motion as legally sufficient (see CPLR 3211, subd. (a)).

In the Jones appeal the amended complaint should stand dismissed, and in the Bowen appeal the order should be reversed and the complaint dismissed. In both cases the allegations of fact are accepted as true. Indeed, many of the disturbing and even dreadful conditions to which they refer are matters of common knowledge. Nevertheless, as this court pointed out so recently in Matter of Abrams v. New York City Tr. Auth., 39 N.Y.2d 990, 992, 387 N.Y.S.2d 235, 236, 355 N.E.2d 289, 290, plaintiffs, however sincerely motivated, may not interpose themselves and the courts into "the management and operation of public enterprises". Involved are, as in the Abrams case, "questions of judgment, discretion, allocation of resources and priorities inappropriate for resolution in the judicial arena", the responsibility for which is "lodged in a network of executive officials, administrative agencies and local legislative bodies." The court spoke again to the same effect in James v. Board of Educ., 42 N.Y.2d 357, 368, 397 N.Y.S.2d 934, 942, 366 N.E.2d 1291, 1298. (See, also, Matter of Community Action Against Lead Poisoning v. Lyons, 43 A.D.2d 201, 202-203, 350 N.Y.S.2d 812, 813-814, affd. on opn. below 36 N.Y.2d 686, 366 N.Y.S.2d 409, 325 N.E.2d 870.)

In the Jones case, involving the zoos, the City of New York, in prolonged fiscal crisis, threatened with bankruptcy, dependent on State and Federal fiscal assistance, and constrained by close regulation, has curtailed services and personnel in efforts to achieve a balanced budget. Its choices have been hard and the measures taken often Draconian, not only at the expense of its animal charges but also of its children in the schools, its poor, its highways and transportation, its courts, jails, hospitals, museums, libraries, police and fire services, and indeed of its whole range of municipal services. Obviously, it is untenable that the judicial process, at the instance of particular persons and groups affected by or concerned with the inevitable consequences of the city's fiscal condition, should intervene and reorder priorities, allocate the limited resources available, and in effect direct how the vast municipal enterprise should conduct its affairs.

In the Bowen case, involving the "dumping" on communities of mentally ill patients, the complexities relate not to fiscal measures alone, but to theories and programs for deinstitutionalizing, for the sake of the patients, the inmates of the crowded and evermore crowding mental hospitals. In the State too there are fiscal problems, although not as grave as those affecting the City of New York. The State's fiscal problem is not necessarily solvable by increased taxation because of the fear that it would accelerate the removal of taxpayers and enterprise from the State. Thus, there may be no easy answer in allocating the State's tax-created resources to assist the fiscally troubled City of Long Beach in handling the problems created by the influx of mental patients. Even more intractable are the conflicting views as to the better therapy for...