Jones v. State
| Decision Date | 23 October 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 59466,59466 |
| Citation | 435 N.Y.S.2d 715,416 N.E.2d 1050,51 N.Y.2d 943 |
| Parties | , 416 N.E.2d 1050 Corrine JONES, as Intended Administratrix of the Estate of Robert M. Jones, Deceased, Appellant, v. STATE of New York, Respondent. (Claim) |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Order affirmed, with costs, for the reasons stated in the memorandum at the Appellate Division (69 A.D.2d 936, 415 N.Y.S.2d 294). We note, however, that, as conceded by the Assistant Attorney-General on argument, the claim was dismissed only as to the cause of action for wrongful death.
MEYER, J., dissents and votes to reverse in an opinion in which WACHTLER and FUCHSBERG, JJ., concur.
Because the State received notice of the cause of action against it in the form of a claim served upon it by the "intended Administratrix" 13 days earlier than the governing statute indicated it should be, persons whom the State intended to benefit by waiving its sovereign immunity and permitting actions to be brought against it in the Court of Claims are being deprived of all recompense. Since I agree with Lee Loevinger, former Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, that "The law, in its most general sense, represents society's effort to be rational in controlling the relations among men" (Loevinger, Dogmatism and Skepticism in Law, 38 Minn.L.Rev. 191, 212 ()), since I cannot conceive that the Legislature meant so readily to take away with one hand what it was giving with the other, and since the formalism 1 which underlies the precedents on which the majority's ruling is based no longer guides the law, I respectfully dissent.
The claim made was for personal injury to and the wrongful death of Robert M. Jones, age 19, who was assaulted and stabbed on April 22, 1975 by a former patient at Bronx State Hospital of known vicious propensities, who, it is claimed, was released prematurely. Robert Jones died on April 23, 1975, survived by his mother, father and three brothers. The claim as served and filed on July 16, 1975 was captioned "Corrine Jones, individually and as intended Administratrix of the Estate of Robert Michael Jones, deceased." Corrine Jones, Robert's mother, was not appointed administratrix, however, until July 29, 1975.
Service and filing were acknowledged by both the clerk of the Court of Claims and the Attorney-General's office by letters noting that the claim was being filed "subject to whatever legal objections may apply thereto." The claim was not again filed and served after July 29, 1975, nor was any motion made by the Attorney-General's office until the case was called for trial on September 19, 1977, although a demand for particulars was made in July, 1976 and was answered.
Having played possum until the time for reservice of the claim by the officially appointed administratrix had passed (compare Code of Professional Responsibility, EC 7-14), the office of the Attorney-General moved at the opening of the trial to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. The motion to dismiss was countered by a cross motion to amend the claim as filed by striking the word "intended". The Court of Claims, "satisfied that the defendant has been properly and timely advised of claimant's cause," denied the State's motion to dismiss and, acting pursuant to the power granted by subdivision 8 of section 9 of the Court of Claims Act to amend and correct any process or claim, granted the motion to amend. The Appellate Division, concluding that "Section 10 of the Court of Claims Act is a jurisdictional prerequisite to maintaining an action in the Court of Claims," reversed and dismissed. While there clearly was precedent for the Appellate Division's ruling, I conclude that that precedent was egregiously wrong and should now be overruled by us.
Section 10 of the Court of Claims Act precedes its various subdivisions with the proscription that "No judgment shall be granted in favor of any claimant unless such claimant shall have complied with the provisions of this section applicable to his claim." The direction that judgment not be entered is not jurisdictional in concept. By itself, therefore, section 10 does not establish a jurisdictional condition precedent. The jurisdiction of the Court of Claims is, however, delimited in section 9 of the act which provides that Thus, only to the extent that the subdivisions of section 10 impose "limitations" on the right of action can it be said that the Legislature established as a jurisdictional condition precedent that a claim filed by the person who is thereafter in fact appointed personal representative of the decedent is, because prematurely filed, outside the court's power to consider. Examination of the pertinent subdivisions of section 10 makes clear that the Legislature had no such intent.
If we turn first to subdivision 2 and consider it by itself, we find that it provides: The only inescapable requirements of that subdivision are, first, that a claim be made, second, that it be made by an executor or administrator, and third, that it be made within 90 days after appointment of the executor or administrator but in any event within two years after the date of death of decedent. The only suggestion in the language of the section that the Legislature placed any significance on the order in which those three steps occurred is the word "after", but clearly a claim filed prior to the appointment of the personal representative has, in relation to the only event of significance to the state decedent's death been filed "within ninety days after" such appointment (cf. Matter of Johnson v. State of New York, 49 A.D.2d 136, 373 N.Y.S.2d 671).
Moreover, the logic of what the Legislature sought to accomplish by the 90-day provision suggests that it did not regard service before appointment as talismanic. In requiring the filing of a claim for wrongful death by "an executor or administrator" the Legislature, aware that some time would be required to obtain such an appointment, made the filing requirement run from the time of appointment rather than, as for other personal injury claims (see subds. 3, 3-a), "within ninety days after the accrual of such claim." Thus, in providing that a death claim could be filed within 90 days after appointment of the personal representative the Legislature sought to extend to the beneficiaries of a death claim extra grace, not to impose upon them an additional, and jurisdictional, condition precedent to the making of a claim.
The conclusion that the Legislature did not conceive the order of filing and appointment to be jurisdictional is reinforced by what was subdivision 5 (now subd. 6) of section 10. More will be said hereafter about the first sentence of the subdivision; for the moment I consider only the significance of the first sentence of the subdivision in relation to its next to last. Those two sentences, as they read when Robert M. Jones was assaulted, provided:
Those sentences show that the Legislature could not have considered anything so lacking in significance as the order of filing and appointment to be jurisdictional, for their language is broad enough to endow the court with discretion (for the exercise of which it had to have jurisdiction) to ignore the failure to file a notice of intention, provided only that the claim be filed within two years of the date of death, the criterion for exercise of discretion being simply whether the State had been prejudiced. Against that grant of discretion it is little short of ludicrous to suggest that the Legislature intended to defeat the claim of decedent's survivors when the State has had full (indeed, extra ) notice and opportunity to investigate and makes no claim of prejudice (preferring instead to hide behind the rule that prejudice need not be shown in the absence of jurisdiction). 2
It can, perhaps be argued that the grant of discretion referred to should not be taken as evidence of legislative intent in the context of the present case because it speaks only to the failure to file and not to the situation of the present case, i. e., a filing which is a "nullity", not followed by a further filing, after the incapacity was...
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