Heimbach v. State of New York

Heimbach v. State is the name of a court decision being invoked by the State Senate Democrats to justify their claim that Senator Padavan's (R-Queens) brief appearance in the Senate Chamber means they had a quorum in the chamber, thus making legal the votes taken.

The State Senate, like most legislative bodies, cannot legally act without the presence of a quorum. This is to prevent a small number of the Senators from gathering and passing bills in the name of the entire body. Without a quorum requirement of some kind, the 3 Senators whose districts are in the Albany Area could get together whenever they wished and run the Senate between them.

The date of all this was June 30, 2009, and the key memorandum outlining the Senate Democrats' argument was authored by Senate Democratic Counsel Gregory M. Krakower.

The Krakower memorandum is located here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17004596/Talking-Points-Passage-of-Bills-F2

The citations for the court case are:

89 A.D.2d 138 (2nd Dept. 1982) (this was a State appeals court);

59 N.Y.2d 891 (1983) (this was the State Court of Appeals, New York State's highest court, affirming the decision of the appeals court);

464 U.S. 956 (1983) (this was the United States Supreme Court; the Krakower memo identifies the year of this decision as 1984, but the database I'm using says 1983, so that's the date I'm going with).

Using databases, I was able to review these cases for myself. I don't know if interpretation of this case will prove to be important or not. If a power-sharing deal is reached, and/or if one side or the other manages to gain power without a deal in some way, it won't matter in the slightest, because it'll be the deal that's controlling. However, if there is no deal reached, this court case and how it is interpreted could have a major impact on whether or not bills passed by the Senate on June 30, 2009 were legal or not.

Assuming I am reading this case correctly , I'd be very surprised if the court accepted it as a precedent for the Padavan matter, as the circumstances were A LOT different.

The Senator at issue back then, Senator Nolan, was in the hospital undergoing elective surgery during the final hours of the Legislative Session, and specifically had filed his presence with the journal clerk before slipping out to have the surgery. (Unlike Senator Padavan who appears to have randomly wandered into Session on his way to a side room to obtain either coffee or a V-8 or a sandwich, or all 3. Accounts of what he was after have differed, and honestly I find the press's focus on that [non-]issue a little disconcerting.) Senator Nolan understood that in slipping out when he did, he was assenting to vote "aye" on all slow roll call votes, and, in response to the Heimbach v. New York case, he signed legal paper stating that in response to this suit.

The issue arose when, out of a 60-member Senate, on a particular bill 31 votes were cast "aye" (including his), 26 votes were "nay," and 3 Senators were "absent." The suit wasn't filed by members of the Senate, but by come county governments who didn't want to enforce the Chapter of Law the disputed vote enacted. (I have no idea what the subject of the legislation was. In theory it shouldn't matter for these issues, though.)

The facts of the case and the legal reasoning used were gleaned from the appeals court's decision. The State Court of Appeals merely affirmed the appeals court, and the U.S. Supreme Court case decided there was no federal question. (In other words, "upon reflection, this is strictly a state matter, so why did you bother us?")

No I am not a lawyer. Further, I fully accept that, sometimes, courts disagree with me, and probably would even if I were a lawyer. Further, this article isn't commenting on the legality of Padavan's presence in the Chamber per se. There may be all kinds of reasons why the courts could rule that his presence in the Senate Chamber did indeed constitute a quorum. However, upon reading the actual Heimbach case, I'd be hard-pressed to think the courts would consider it a precedent, because the sitautions were vastly different.

Courts have surprised me before, however, so we'll see.

Having said all that? Were I Senator Padavan, and making sure the Senate had quorum as infrequently as possible was highly important to my side of this dispute? I wouldn't have been anywhere near the chamber and it begs the question....What was he thinking? He could have slipped out and gotten his coffee, V-8, or sandwich, or whatever it was at any number of other places in easy walking distance of the capital.

What was he thinking? Please don't tell me he didn't want to pay for the items. Cynicism about politics is fine but come on now, to think he'd endanger his side of the fight to avoid paying less than $10 for some food items is a bit much!!??

EDIT: A few hours later, being the kind of person who strives for thoroughness, I went back and read the decision yet again.

First of all, I wanted to note that the bill at issue dealt with taxes in the MTA District, something of a perennial issue.

Secondly and more importantly, however, I got an important (but I'd argue not critical) detail wrong in my initial entry: The Senator at issue had told his leader (the Minority Leader of the State Senate) he was going to be absent, and the Minority Leader "forgot" to inform the Clerk.

To me, as a non-lawyer, the cases still seem really different.

But as I said in the un-edited, initial article: The court may still rule against the Republicans, I just can't see them using this particular case to do it, as the circumstances were very different. "Senator passing through the chamber," versus, "Senator wasn't going to be around all day, but absence never noted."

The underlying principle, I think, is, "the Senator doesn't have to be physically present."

In more recent years, though, the State Senate has had quorum calls in the middle of sessions before, I've seen it. So the rules regarding when they need to be in the chamber are clearly nowhere near as lax as they once were, some decades ago.

I'm just rambling now....We'll see what happens.