Owner Operator Indep. Drivers Ass'n v. N.Y. State Dep't of Transp.
| Decision Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | Index 904994-19 |
| Citation | 2020 NY Slip Op 34831 (U) |
| Parties | In the Matter of the Application of: OWNER OPERATOR INDEPENDENT DRIVERS ASSOCIATION, INC.; DOUGLAS J. HASNER; DAVID D. WPNN, d/b/a DAVE-LIN ENTERPRISES; and GARY L. O'BRIEN, d/b/a BLUE EAGLE EXPRESS, Petitioners-Plaintiffs, v. NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; MARIE THERESE DOMINGUEZ, ACTLNG COMMISSIONER. NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; GEORGE P. BEACH, II, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NEW YORK STATE DIVISION OF STATE POLICE, AND MARK J.F. SCHROEDER. COMMISSIONER FOR THE NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES, Respondents-Defendants. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court |
Unpublished Opinion
TABNER, RYAN and KENIRY, LLP (by Thomas R. Fallati, Esq.) The Cullen Law Firm, PLLC (by Daniel E. Cohen and Gregory Reed Esqs.) Attorneys for Petitioners/Plaintiffs
LETITIA JAMES, Attorney General of the State of New York (by Assistant Attorney General Helena Lynch) Attorneys for Respondents/Defendants.
DECISION & ORDER (MOTION #2)
CATHERINE CHOLAKIS ACTING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.
Respondents/defendants (respondents) in this hybrid CPLR Article 78 and declaratory judgment action move to dismiss the petition/complaint under CPLR 3211(a)(7) for failure to state a cause of action. They also move pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(8) to dismiss as to the individual respondents/defendants for want of personal jurisdiction over them. Petitioners/plaintiffs (petitioners) have not opposed dismissal as to the individual respondents. They do, however, vigorously oppose dismissal as to respondent New York State Department of Transportation. Accordingly, the motion to dismiss the petition/complaint as to the individual respondents is granted as unopposed, the Court finding no evidence in the record of personal jurisdiction over them having been acquired. The balance of this Decision and Order, therefore, deals with the question of whether petitioners have a cause of action in the present litigation against the remaining respondent, the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT).
Petitioner Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, Inc. (OOIDA) is a not-for-profit corporation with headquarters in Missouri. It describes itself as "a national trade association of owner operator truck drivers, small business truckers, and employee drivers" (Petition/Complaint at para 22). It states as a component of its mission "to protect the rights of truck drivers" (Id. at para 23). The individual petitioners are current or former truck drivers who allege that they have been or will be impacted by the set of regulations at the center of this lawsuit (Id. at paras 31-44).
The present litigation arises out of the adoption, on April 24, 2019, by NYSDOT of 17 NYCRR § 820.6, an amendment to a set of regulations designed to require commercial truckers to maintain accurate records of their hours of service in order to avoid accidents caused by driver fatigue. The administrative exhibits provided by petitioners indicates that New York State has had some form of "hours of service" (HOS) recording regulations for over thirty years. The recent amendment adopts, in its entirety, a set of federal regulations (49 CFR Part 395) which are intended to increase the accuracy of HOS records through the mandatory use of "electronic logging devices" (ELD's) in certain late-model over-the-road trucks.
The adoption of this so-called "ELD Rule" is the result of an agreement reached between the federal government and the Slates. At the time of adoption, 47 other States had already entered into similar agreements [see Notice of Adoption. New York State Register [Apr 24, 2019]). In exchange for the adoption of the rule. New York has received and will continue to receive a significant amount of federal funding for law enforcement. In fiscal 2017, for example, that amount was in excess of 14 billion dollars (see Notices appended as Exhibits A and B to the Petition/Complaint).
Petitioners initially challenged the federal regulations on Fourth Amendment grounds. contending that the ELD Rule constituted an unreasonable search and seizure. They were unsuccessful in the federal litigation (see Owner Operator Individual Drivers Assoc, Inc. v. United States DOT, 840 F.3d 879 [7th Cir 2016]). When it appeared to petitioners that New York law enforcement officers were attempting to enforce the federal ELD Rule prior to its enactment as a New York regulation, petitioners brought an action in New York State Supreme Court in which they sought an injunction against respondents. That action was dismissed on summary judgment, with the Court determining that the federal regulations were not being enforced by State officers (Owner Operator Independent Drivers Assoc, v. Calhoun, 62 Misc.3d 909 [Sup Ct. Albany Cty 2018] [Platkin J.]).
Now that the federal regulations have been formally adopted by respondents as State regulations, petitioners have renewed their challenge. They contend that the adoption of the regulations by respondent DOT was arbitrary and capricious. They also contend that the regulations are facially violative of both Article I § 6 and Article I § 12 of the State Constitution. As noted, the matter is now before the Court on a motion to dismiss.
That portion of the present litigation grounded on CPLR Article 78 is predicated on a claim that the adoption of the New York ELD Rule was arbitrary and capricious. Specifically petitioners allege that respondents failed to comply with SAPA § 202 because respondent NYSDOT "denied OOIDA's request for a hearing, failed to meaningfully consider or address OOIDA's comments, failed to address any of the legal deficiencies of the NY ELD Rule and failed to take into accout the real-world experience of ELD requirements1' (Petition/Complaint at para 187). A review of the record generated in the rule-making process, however, demonstrates that petitioners do not have a cause of action under CPLR Article 78.
During the public notice and comment period prior to the enactment of the New York ELD Rule, petitioners were the only ones to file public comments. Their submission was 28 pages long. It raised - and eloquently argued - petitioners' concerns that the proposed regulations ran afoul of federal and State Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as their protections of due process. Petitioners also argued that NYSDOT had improperly delegated State rulemaking authority to the federal government. In the notice of adoption, however, respondent NYSDOT addressed each of petitioners' concerns. NYSDOT succinctly reviewed the long history of New York's regulation of HOS for commercial drivers; detailed the agreement, shared with 47 other states, entered into with the federal government; noted that New York did not ''automatically" adopt the federal regulations as they were enacted and amended, but rather enacted individual regulations selectively; and, most significantly. NYSDOT addressed both the federal Constitutional challenge by citing the Seventh Circuit OOIDA decision as well as the State Constitutional challenge by citing to the analysis performed by Judge Platkin in the Calhoun decision. While respondents did not engage in a painstaking rehash of these two decisions, it cannot be argued that the Seventh Circuit decision was not binding on petitioners, as they were parties to that action; nor can it reasonably be argued that Judge Platkin's reasoning regarding the State Constitutional challenges, though perhaps dicta in the Calhoun matter, constituted persuasive and rational authority for the position taken by respondents regarding petitioners' public comments. As a result, petitioners have no cause of action against respondents for arbitrary and capricious conduct in NYSDOTs adoption of the regulations over petitioners" objection, as due consideration was clearly given to their comments as required under SAPA.
New York State Constitution Article I § 12
Petitioners' main argument is that the ELD Rule, on its face, violates the protections against unreasonable searches and seizures embodied in the New York State Constitution. Their argument is premised on the fact that, (Petition/Complaint at para 93). Petitioners contend that "[e]ven when the truck is being used for personal reasons, the ELD continues to record where and when the driver travels - to family, friends, doctors, counselors, drugstores, places of worship, and any place of a personal nature an individual goes in their daily life" (Id. at para 95). Petitioners further allege that 4"[t]he NY ELD Rule enables intrusive tracking in the form of mandatory monitoring of drivers' every movement via a sophisticated electronic device'' (Id. at para 98 [emphasis added]). In short, petitioners describe the ELD Rule as enabling a system of government-mandated personal intrusions beyond Orwellian in its proportions. Surely a set of regulations that would require commercial drivers not only to surrender every shred of personal privacy to the government, but that would also allow government agents to review the record of those drivers' every movement whenever they chose would be unconstitutional on its face. Indeed, to hold otherwise would offend two and a half centuries of Constitutional jurisprudence.
A close look at the ELD Rule, however, discloses a very different landscape than that depicted in petitioner's papers. The ELD Rule requires certain commercial vehicles to be equipped with an electronic device to monitor and record the date; the time; the vehicle's geographic location accurate to within one half mile (...
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