Court Opinion

ID: 9785282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 21:13:59.470236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:14.769800
License: Public Domain

Smith, J. (concurring).
I join the Court’s unanimous opinion, but write separately to express my unhappiness with the result we are forced to reach.
Petitioner was dismissed from her position in November 2005. A Hearing Officer has recommended that her dismissal be upheld. For the reasons the Court’s opinion explains, a Deputy Commissioner must now decide whether to follow that recommendation. But even if the recommendation is followed, petitioner will still get back pay for the four years following her dismissal—four years during which she has not done a day’s work for the County. If the dismissal was justified, this is surely an excessive burden to impose on the County for a procedural error.
But the result is compelled by our decision in Matter of Sinicropi v Bennett (60 NY2d 918 [1983]). Sinicropi seems wrong to *189me. It also seemed wrong to Justice O’Connor, who wrote the Appellate Division decision that we affirmed in that case (Sinicropi v Bennett, 92 AD2d 309 [2d Dept 1983]). Though believing himself bound by precedent, Justice O’Connor—dissenting persuasively from his own holding—pointed out that the decisions allowing back pay in situations like this unjustifiably expand the relief that would have been available at common law. The remedy for an employee whose dismissal is procedurally flawed should be prompt reinstatement, not pay for no work. Justice O’Connor argued for the principle that, until and unless an employee is reinstated, “no claim for back pay [should] be honored even if the employee’s dismissal [is] declared invalid” (id. at 316).
Justice O’Connor invited a “re-examination” of the analysis on which the precedents he thought himself bound to follow were based (id. at 310). Unfortunately, our Court did not accept the invitation. We affirmed in a one paragraph memorandum, with the conclusory statement that the discharged employee was entitled to “the salary she would have earned for the period between the original termination decision (which was annulled) and the subsequent termination decision” (60 NY2d at 920). I think this was a mistake, but there is nothing we can do about it now. The problem is one that only the Legislature can fix.
Chief Judge Lippman and Judges Graffeo, Read, Smith, Pigott and Jones concur with Judge Ciparick; Judge Smith concurs in a separate opinion.
Order modified, etc.