Opinion
February 25, 1971
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County, entered March 21, 1969, granting petition of petitioner, Seymour Rabintzky, and denying petition of petitioner Paul Silverman, and judgment, Supreme Court, New York County, entered March 21, 1969, granting, in part, petition of petitioner Thomas A. Crawford, unanimously reversed, on the law, and the petitions are dismissed with leave to submit new petitions setting forth the relevant facts singular to each one of the petitioners involved, without costs and without disbursements. The petitioners, purporting to act in behalf of all others similarly situated, had previously been appointed and acted under their respective titles in the Municipal Court of the City of New York. By plan established on July 1, 1966, the officers and employees of the aforesaid Municipal Court were assimilated into the Unified Court System, and the functions and tasks of the petitioners were transferred to the Civil Court of the City of New York. The petitioners are allegedly aggrieved because they continue to perform substantially the same duties after reclassification as before but not under a correspondingly appropriate title: or that the reclassification under which each one received his present title ignored the equivalence of his prior duties as to present duties assigned under the Unified Court System. But there is no specificity as to what duties were previously lawfully performed or covered by pertinent job description and which are now performed or covered by job description after reclassification by any individual (see Matter of Aronson v. McCoy, 33 A.D.2d 183, 186); the duties themselves are described only in the broadest general terms. We have held in Matter of McKeon v. McCoy ( 33 A.D.2d 897) that a "petition is defective as it fails to set forth the situation in regard to individual petitioners". And we have held in Gledhill v. Best Co. ( 33 A.D.2d 541) that when petitioners create "factual issues which differ from plaintiff to plaintiff", a representative action will not lie. Thus, a class action here seems similarly inappropriate. Some of the class, on whose behalf the proceeding is brought, do not challenge their new reclassification within the administrative agency. And the record does not show which named petitioners are singularly aggrieved by the specific application of the order of reclassification. Having "separate wrongs" a class action is unauthorized by the precedents. (See Lichtyger v. Franchard Corp., 18 N.Y.2d 528.) Accordingly, should the petitioners, or any of them, be so advised, they may institute a new petition setting forth the relevant facts appertaining to each petitioner affected. ( Matter of Ainsberg v. McCoy, 26 N.Y.2d 56; Matter of Aronson v. McCoy, supra.)
Concur — Capozzoli, J.P., McGivern, Markewich, Nunez and McNally, JJ.