| Evans v State of New York |
| 2008 NY Slip Op 09674 [57 AD3d 1123] |
| December 11, 2008 |
| Appellate Division, Third Department |
| mWilliam Anthony Evans, Appellant, v State of New York,Respondent. |
—[*1] Andrew M. Cuomo, Attorney General, Albany (Owen Demuth of counsel), forrespondent.
Stein, J. Appeal from a judgment of the Court of Claims (Lack, J.), entered July 27, 2007, upon adecision of the court in favor of defendant.
Claimant, an inmate at Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County, was assigned to work in thefood service program pursuant to an inmate worker agreement signed with the Department ofCorrectional Services in April 1998. In April 2005, the Deputy Superintendent of Programs at thecorrectional facility issued a memorandum requiring any inmate working in a higher paid, preferred jobassignment—such as the food service program—and who had refused a needed treatmentprogram, to request placement on the waiting list for that program within 90 days or else be removedfrom the preferred job assignment and moved to a lesser paying job. Thereafter, claimant, who hadpreviously refused to participate in the residential substance abuse treatment (hereinafter RSAT)program recommended by his counselor, failed to request placement on the waiting list for the RSATwithin 90 days and, consequently, was removed from the food service program in July 2005 andreassigned to the library clerk program, a lesser paying job. Claimant filed a grievance concerning thisreassignment, which was affirmed by the Central Office Review Committee (hereinafter CORC).Claimant subsequently commenced this action for breach of contract, claiming $7,072 in lost wagesfrom the date of his reassignment to his first possible parole date in 2015. Following a bench trial, theCourt of Claims found in favor of [*2]defendant and claimant nowappeals.[FN*]
We affirm. Initially, to the extent that inmates have "no statutory or constitutional right to a prisonjob" (Matter of Stephens v Central Off. Review Comm. of N.Y. State Dept. of CorrectionalServs., 255 AD2d 845, 846 [1998]; see Matter of Semkus v Coughlin, 139 AD2d 868,869 [1988], lv denied 72 NY2d 808 [1988]), the inmate worker agreement did not constitutea contract obligating defendant to maintain claimant's assignment to the food service program for thelength of his incarceration. Further, even if we were to find that the agreement was binding, claimant isnot entitled to recover on his breach of contract claim. Section 4 (c) of the agreement provided fortermination of an inmate's assignment upon the "violation of any correctional facility rule or procedure"and, here, claimant admittedly failed to request placement on the waiting list for the RSAT programwithin the 90-day period, as required by the rule outlined in the memorandum.
Claimant's contention that defendant failed to preserve certain arguments that were not raisedbefore CORC is wholly without merit, as this is not a CPLR article 78 proceeding challenging CORC'sdetermination (compare Matter of Khan v New York State Dept. of Health, 96 NY2d 879,880 [2001]; Matter of Hamilton vGoord, 32 AD3d 642, 643 [2006], lv denied 7 NY3d 715 [2006]).
The parties' remaining contentions have been considered and rejected.
Cardona, P.J., Spain, Rose and Kavanagh, JJ., concur. Ordered that the judgment is affirmed,without costs.
Footnote *: Although claimant's notice of appealindicates that he is appealing from the Court of Claims' July 20, 2007 decision rather than the judgmententered July 27, 2007, we will exercise our discretion to treat the notice of appeal as valid pursuant toCPLR 5520 (c).