Case Name: In the Matter of Arthur Katz et al., Respondents, v. Solomon Hoberman, as Personnel Director of the Department of Personnel of the City of New York and as Chairman of the Civil Service Commission of the City of New York, et al., Appellants; In the Matter of John J. Elliott et al., Respondents, v. Solomon Hoberman et al., Constituting the Department of Personnel of the City of New York, et al., Appellants
Court: New York Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1971-05-26
Citations: 28 N.Y.2d 970
Docket Number: 
Parties: In the Matter of Arthur Katz et al., Respondents, v. Solomon Hoberman, as Personnel Director of the Department of Personnel of the City of New York and as Chairman of the Civil Service Commission of the City of New York, et al., Appellants. In the Matter of John J. Elliott et al., Respondents, v. Solomon Hoberman et al., Constituting the Department of Personnel of the City of New York, et al., Appellants.
Judges: 
Reporter: New York Reports
Volume: 28
Pages: 970–976

Head Matter:
In the Matter of Arthur Katz et al., Respondents, v. Solomon Hoberman, as Personnel Director of the Department of Personnel of the City of New York and as Chairman of the Civil Service Commission of the City of New York, et al., Appellants. In the Matter of John J. Elliott et al., Respondents, v. Solomon Hoberman et al., Constituting the Department of Personnel of the City of New York, et al., Appellants.
Argued November 18, 1970;
reargued April 22, 1971;
decided May 26, 1971.
J. Lee Rankin, Corporation Counsel (Edmund B. Hennefeld and Stanley Buchsbaum of counsel), for appellants.
Richard T. Sinrod, Sylvester J. Garamella and Vincent P. Rao for Arthur Katz et al., respondents.
Thomas R. Newman, Benjamin Metviner and Benjamin H. Siff for John J. Elliott et al., respondents.

Opinion:
Memorandum. Upon reargument, we adhere to our original decision and memorandum and write further only to touch upon certain questions suggested on the reargument — one as to the propriety of the common practice of using questions propounded on previous examinations and the other as to the practicability of excising the questions here in dispute.
The examination was canceled, before any of the papers had been graded, when the commission learned that it had been mis taken in believing that there had not been released to the public the California examination from which it had extracted and used, in completely identical form, a block of 12 multiple-part questions. Neither the commission's cancellation of the examination nor our decision sustaining that action reflected adversely upon the general and entirely proper practice of utilizing previous examinations as sources of questions. Appellant director, in opposing the article 78 application in this case, stated that such is the appellants ' practice but that they ' ' would never excerpt 12 questions ad seriatim from a single previous examination for inclusion in another examination; nor would they lump together a series of questions borrowed from a previous examination. ' '
As respects the practicability of excising the 12 disputed questions, which dealt with correct English usage, it is clear that the decision to apply tests in this subject to candidates for police captaincies was within the area of the commission's authority and, accordingly, that judicial excision of the questions would constitute an improper intrusion upon the commission's prerogatives and a substitution of the court's judgment for that of the commission, in contravention of the fundamental law obtaining in this area.