Court Opinion

ID: 9716089
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:26:19.964143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:41.577491
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(concurring). Here, as in State of N.Y. ex rel. Harkavy v Consilvio (7 NY3d 607, 614 [2006, R.S. Smith, J., concurring]), I find my preference for one statutory interpretation over another influenced by underlying constitutional issues.
The question of how to apply the statute of limitations here is difficult, as it often is in litigation challenging government action. The two possibilities are well presented by Judge Pigott’s majority opinion and Judge Read’s dissent. I am joining the result and reasoning of the majority opinion, in part because I doubt whether the result urged by the dissent would be constitutionally acceptable in this case.
To affirm the Appellate Division decision here would be to hold that petitioners’ constitutional claims — at least some of which, I think, are quite substantial — became time-barred four months after the DOCS-MCI contract, or the most recent amendment to it, was approved by the Comptroller. In theory, petitioners — most of them family members of New York State *198prisoners — could have learned of the Comptroller’s approval by perusing the public record; as a practical matter, it is highly unlikely that they did so, and unreasonable to expect them to. Thus, the Appellate Division has in effect held that claims like these can be time-barred before the people entitled to bring them knew or reasonably should have known that they existed. I understand the need of government agencies for finality and repose, but I have trouble accepting the idea that agencies can extinguish constitutional rights so easily.
It is in part to avoid the constitutional problems that this case would otherwise present that I choose the majority’s rather than the dissent’s view of when petitioners’ claims accrued for statute of limitations purposes. For that reason, I think the dissent may be right, in a sense, to suggest that our statute of limitations holding here is “sui generis” (dissenting op at 202).