TLC Courts Are Hopelessly Biased, Cabbies Say

For years, the city’s taxi drivers have reviled the TLC legal tribunal as a kangaroo court.  Now the cabbies have advanced this claim in great detail as part of a federal class action lawsuit that seeks to have the entire “taxi court” declared unconstitutional.  

The TLC courts are often misunderstood as the place where passengers go to file complaints about cabbies.  The fact is more than 95% of the cases are initiated by TLC inspectors—the same folks who arrested Mike Wallace—and ruled on by TLC judges.  The set-up makes the TLC courts are so unfair to the city’s cabbies that the entire tribunal should be declared unconstitutional, the city’s taxi drivers claim. 

The TLC courts violate the Due Process clause of the Constitution on a daily basis, the cabbies say, the factual and legal claims coming as part of a lawsuit in a Brooklyn federal court that focuses primarily on Operation Refusal, a TLC action directed by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in November 1999.   At the end of the day, TLC employed a deeply unconstitutional judicial system where TLC executives wrote the rules, employed the prosecutors, hired and fired the judges, and decided the appeals.

The former mayor along with then TLC chairwoman Diane McGrath-McKechnie ordered Operation Refusal, as it was known, in response to a highly publicized complaint by movie star Danny Glover.   A large part of that initiative has already been declared unconstitutional. To date, however, the former mayor has been able to dodge questions about his role in Operation Refusal.  But lawyers for the cabbies are seeking to require him to give his testimony, which is long overdue.

Giuliani—then contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate against Hillary Clinton—ordered the TLC to confiscate taxis and suspend hack licenses without a hearing of any kind.  That action was held unconstitutional by Federal District Court Judge Raymond J. Dearie in April 2002.  But the cabbies are still seeking damages, a restoration of their licenses and a ruling that the TLC courts are unconstitutional.

The TLC also sought to permanently revoke the licenses of hundreds of drivers if they were found guilty of a “service refusal” in the TLC courts.  While no one says the TLC should not prosecute service refusals (as the TLC has done for years) the drivers contend that the maximum penalty the law allows for a first offense is a $350 fine.  TLC judges, though, would routinely permit both suspensions and revocations based on illegal orders from TLC executives. At least 100 drivers had their licenses revoked; more than 500 (perhaps even 1000) were suspended.

In a motion currently before the court, the drivers have presented specific proof that the TLC courts themselves systemically deprive them of a fair hearing.  The cabbies cite a score of reasons, including: (1) that the TLC administrative law judges are at-will employees who may be fired by the agency at any time and without cause; (2) that the former chief TLC judge handpicked the ALJs who would decide the Operation Refusal cases; (3) that disfavored ALJs were, in fact, fired, while those who were well-liked were hired to higher-paying staff jobs; (4) that TLC judges refused to even consider the legality of the agency’s policies; (5) that the TLC regularly instructed its judges on matters of policy via private memos rather than through public rule-making; and (6) that the TLC’s former chief judge informed the ALJs how to decide Operation Refusal cases also by ex parte memo. 

As one longtime ALJ has testified, “We knew who buttered our bread.”  With the TLC executives having firm power over their judges’ income, the city’s generally voiceless, mostly immigrant taxi drivers simply are not afforded the minimum that the Constitution demands: a fair trial in a fair tribunal.

Discovery has also revealed that the current chairman of the TLC, Matthew Daus, when he was the agency’s general counsel, hired his law school classmates to run the TLC courts and supervise the judges—while he supervised the prosecutions.  In Operation Refusal cases, appeals were decided not by ALJs at all, but by Chairwoman McGrath-McKechnie and Chairman Daus.  The TLC presented Operation Refusal as an effort to root out alleged racial bias among taxi drivers.  But in fact it suspended drivers for destination refusals, which have no racial element, more than five times as often.

The charges were filed as part of a motion for summary judgment in case called Padberg v. McGrath-McKechnie (00 Civ. 3355).  The cabbies are seeking damages from the TLC and the city and punitive damages from Giuliani, Diane McGrath-McKechnie, Daus and others.

The lead plaintiff is John "Jack" Padberg, who had driven a taxi for 26 years at the time of his license was revoked. 

Counsel for the plaintiffs is Dan Ackman, who can be reached at 917-282-8178.

 SEE ALSO:
CASE FILE | Background Brief |TLC ACCESS CASE | SCHALLER' S TAXI FACT BOOK | WALL STREET JOURNAL ON THE TLC |  TAXI STORIES | BIO