A state appellate panel has said court officers for New York City's lower courts are not due retroactive or prospective salary adjustments—which may have amounted to thousands of dollars for each officer and would have been linked to a 2004 reclassification of their employment titles.

A unanimous Appellate Division, First Department, panel on Thursday threw out claims for retroactive relief and prospective salary-adjustment relief lodged by the New York State Court Officers Association. The panel ruled that the union, which represents some 1,500 court officers serving not state courts but rather New York City's lower courts, filed its action far too long after the applicable four-month statute of limitations had run.

In partially reversing a Manhattan Supreme Court ruling that had granted the union's Article 78 petition for prospective relief, the panel drew no distinction between the two types of relief. Instead, the justices wrote that “there is no legal basis for a distinction between 'prospective' and 'retroactive' relief here.” They added, “In failing to challenge the administrative order in a timely fashion, petitioner [the union] waived any right to the benefit of legal review of the December [2004] order, whatever its implications for the future.”

But the union's president and its attorney quickly took umbrage with the decision on Thursday. David Schlachter, a solo practitioner in Uniondale representing the union, said in a phone interview that the NYSCOA had based its arguments on equal protection principles—pointing to Suffolk County court officers who ultimately prevailed in their similar fight for salary adjustments based on the same 2004 reclassification—and that the court has failed to properly assess the equal protection position.

“Suffolk prevailed in the Court of Appeals,” Schlachter said. “The people in New York City were doing the same work, under the same salary schedule and really were identical in all respects. Essentially, our argument was that equal protection requires that they be treated in the same way.”

Said Dennis Quirk, president of the union, “We're disappointed in how the judges found that all court officers could not be treated equally. And this is just another smack in the face to every court officer in New York City.”

But the panel, consisting of Justices David Friedman, Marcy Kahn, Ellen Gesmer, Cynthia Kern and Peter Moulton, did address equal protection in its decision, writing that the “time-barred claims may not be revived by recourse to equal protection principles. There is no toll that exists 'solely to enable aggrieved parties to sit on their existing rights pending the outcome of an early challenge brought by others,'” while citing New York City Health and Hosp.. v. McBarnette, 84 NY2d 194, 205-206 (1994).

According to the panel, in the 2015-filed Article 78 proceeding, Quirk sought to compel the state court system to pay NYSCOA members a salary adjustment retroactive to Dec. 22, 2004. In petitioning for the adjustments, Quirk cited the Court of Appeals ruling in O'Neill v. Pfau, 31 Misc 3d 184 (Sup Ct, Suffolk County 2011), affd as modified 101 AD3d 731 (2d Dept 2012), affd 23 NY3d 993 (2014), in which the high court ruled in the Suffolk County court officers' favor.

In O'Neill, the panel explained, a group of Suffolk County court officers had expediently challenged an administrative order issued by the Office of Court Administration in January 2004. The order had reclassified numerous court officers' employment titles across the state, thereby affecting their compensation, and it led to upward salary adjustment to those titles, retroactive to January 2004. But the Suffolk County court officers had argued that the effect of applying the December 2004 order retroactively was to starve them of a year of continuous service credit to which they otherwise would've been entitled.

Eventually, years after the Suffolk officers had made their challenge, it was determined the state had acted arbitrarily and without a rational basis in making the December 2004 order retroactive to January 2004, the panel wrote.

The NYSCOA, whose court officers serve courts including the city's Criminal Court, Civil Court and Family Court, did not launch its action until after the Court of Appeals issued its O'Neill decision in 2014, and after it then had a request denied by the state for a recalculation of NYSCOA salaries in accordance with the Court of Appeals' O'Neill ruling.

The panel wrote that the NYSCOA should have brought its claim a full decade before, in order to avoid it being time-barred under the four-month statute of limitations.

“A cause of action challenging an administrative body's payment of salary or pay adjustments accrues when the petitioner receives a check or salary payment reflecting the relevant administrative order,” the justices wrote, citing O'Neill, 23 NY3d at 995. “Like the Suffolk County court officers, petitioner and the NYSCOA members received their first paycheck reflecting the December 2004 order in April 2005. Thus, the four-month statute of limitations had run long before they commenced this proceeding,” the justices added in In re Dennis W. Quirk v. Hon. Jonathan Lippman,100129/15.

A spokesman for the Office of Court Administration did not return a call seeking comment.

John McConnell, counsel at the Office of Court Administration, represented the government in the appeal. Pedro Morales, another OCA attorney, handled prior proceedings.