NYS Public Health Legal Manual: A Guide for Judges, Attorneys ...

NEW YORK STATE PUBLIC HEALTH LEGAL MANUAL § 1.123
and court personnel, those administrative steps may include centralized
hearings, case consolidations, the holding of multiple proceedings
before a single judge, and the adjustment of priorities in the
hearing of cases (especially those arising as a direct result of the
emergency). And where the exigencies of holding isolation and
quarantine hearings for infected individuals may require the movement
of the hearing to a local site other than the courthouse, court
administrators may work with local authorities to do so as well.
Because court administrators remain bound by existing law, the
administrative response to public health emergencies affecting court
operations may have to be supplemented by adjustments to those
laws, especially to the procedural requirements of the Criminal Procedure
Law [CPL] and the CPLR. These adjustments can be made
through the Governor’s power to suspend laws pursuant to a declaration
of emergency. Exec. Law § 29-a(1). The management of cases
by the courts during a public health emergency thus requires a cooperative
effort of the Chief Judge and Chief Administrative Judge
with the Governor—the former to reallocate court resources, and the
Governor to suspend those statutes, consistent with the rights of the
parties to fair hearings, that restrict court administrators from successfully
meeting the challenge of operating the courts during a
disaster emergency. See, e.g., Executive Order No. 113.7, September
12, 2001 [suspending CPLR statutes of limitations and CPL periods
of trial readiness during the emergency caused by the closing of
courts and destruction of law offices in New York County as a result
of the 9/11 attacks]; Executive Order 113.28, October 4, 2001 [reinstating
statutes of limitations except for persons “directly affected
by the disaster emergency”].
Should court administrators have to take steps that include the
centralization of hearings and the consolidation of cases, the judges
hearing cases under those conditions have broad authority to devise
court procedures to facilitate the hearing of those cases. Section
2-b(3) of the Judiciary Law permits judges “to devise and make new
process and forms of proceedings,” and the courts have cited this
statute, together with a judge’s inherent rule-making powers as
recognized in section 30 of Article VI of the State Constitution, in
69