Procedure matters.

The First Department dismissed an Article 78 petition seeking to overturn the termination of petitioner's employment, in Fluellen v. Hanley, which was decided on November 13, 2007.

The court pointed to the collective bargaining agreement which required petitioner to avail herself of a four-step grievance procedure in connection with the disciplinary proceeding. Petitioner did not go through the fourth step in the procedure and so was precluded from even bringing the Article 78 proceeding. Furthermore, said the court, she participated in the second and third steps of the grievance procedure without objection, notwithstanding her union's objection to the procedure during the first step, and so she effectively acquiesced to it.

The court acknowledged the legitimacy of petitioner's argument that her employer had improperly converted a proceeding to determine her medical fitness into a disciplinary proceeding, but it went for naught because she still was required to exhaust the grievance procedure. Indeed, petitioner could have raised her conversion claim in the disciplinary proceeding, and she did so.