It has been stated that "modification under rule 60(b) requires `that a significant change of circumstances shall have occurred since the date of the final judgment to warrant its modification.'" Duran v. Elrod, 713 F.2d 292, 296 (7th Cir. 1983) (citing Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925, 928 (S.D.N.Y. 1981)). In the leading Supreme Court case on modification of consent decrees, Justice Cardozo stated:
Judge Lasker's analyses of the evidence and legal issues are found in a series of published decisions, familiarity with which is assumed. Benjamin v. Malcolm, 495 F.Supp. 1357 (1980); 88 F.R.D. 333 (1980); 528 F.Supp. 925 (1981); 564 F.Supp. 668 (1983); 626 F.Supp. 1264 (1986); 629 F.Supp. 713 (1986). The complaint, which was filed in June 1975, alleges that in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 various officials of the City of New York (hereinafter sometimes referred to as the "City") are responsible for a broad range of conditions at the HDM, which violate the detainees' constitutional rights, including those under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and seeks appropriate injunctive relief.
LASKER, District Judge. The history of this much litigated case involving the overcrowding of New York City jails is set forth in numerous prior decisions, see Benjamin v. Malcolm, 564 F. Supp. 668 (S.D.N.Y. 1983); Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925 (S.D.N Y 1981); Benjamin v. Malcolm, 495 F. Supp. 1357 (S.D.N.Y. 1980); Benjamin v. Malcolm, 88 F.R.D. 333 (S.D.N.Y. 1980). On January 30, 1986, in the most recent decision in this action, we granted the motion of Governor Mario Cuomo and Thomas A. Coughlin III, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Correctional Services ("the State defendants") to vacate this court's August 20, 1981 order requiring the State defendants to accept "state ready" inmates within forty-eight hours.
DeFilippis v. United States, 567 F.2d 341, 342 (7th Cir. 1977). As District Judge Lasker held earlier in Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925, 928 (S.D.N.Y. 1981), modification under Rule 60(b) requires "that a significant change of circumstance shall have occurred since the date of the final judgment to warrant its modification." Justice Cardozo held in United States v. Swift Co., 286 U.S. 106, 119, 52 S.Ct. 460, 464, 76 L.Ed. 999 (1931):
The difference between conditions which exist in detention centers in general and prisons in general." Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925, 929 (S.D.N.Y. 1981). There is no doubt that the situation in the state system is a grave situation, as it also is in the city system.
During the summer of 1981, faced with a choice between opening 600 unused cells at the Rikers Island facility, and requiring DOCS to lift its cap at Attica, the federal district court chose the latter course. See Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F.Supp. 925, 926 (S.D.N.Y. 1981). The Prisoners' Legal Services Report
The court noted first the "extraordinary" nature of rule 60(b) relief, and the requirement that "a significant change of circumstance shall have occurred since the date of the final judgment to warrant its modification." 713 F.2d at 296, quoting, Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925, 928 (S.D.N Y 1981). Defendants failed to make this showing, even though they were able to establish unforeseen population increases. The court concluded
Analogously, therefore, in the institution-wide setting, the quality of care delivered at BPC must be measured by medical or psychological criteria and not by exigency, administrative convenience, or other non-medical criteria. Defendants cannot justify inadequate care at BPC on the ground that they are preventing similar inadequacies from spreading to other institutions. Cf. Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925, 930 (S.D.N.Y. 1981) ("[W]hat the State proposes here is to equalize unconstitutionality by requiring the City to share the burden of impermissible overcrowding with the State. The remedy does not lie in equalizing unconstitutionality but in eliminating it.").
As stated by Judge Lasker in the Southern District of New York in a similar State prison-County jail context: "Moreover, the only circumstance which has changed — an increase in the population of the State's prison population — was entirely foreseeable in [October], 1981, and had been for a long period before that date." Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F. Supp. 925, 929 (1981). Because I believe that the provision in the consent order requiring the County to close the doors to the UCJ as a "last-resort" measure is an unnecessarily intrusive and disruptive one, I will relieve the County of complying with it.
A significant change of circumstances must have occurred since the date of the original judgment or order to warrant modification, and a failure to appeal or seek other appropriate relief will not suffice. Andrews v. Heinold Commodities, Inc., 771 F.2d 184, 188 (7th Cir.1985) (citing Ackermann v. United States, 340 U.S. 193, 71 S.Ct. 209, 95 L.Ed. 207 (1950)); Duran v. Elrod, 713 F.2d 292, 296 (7th Cir.1983) (citing Benjamin v. Malcolm, 528 F.Supp. 925, 928 (S.D.N.Y.1981)), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1108, 104 S.Ct. 1615, 80 L.Ed.2d 143 (1984). Whether the Colorado action is property of the estate, in fact, was previously addressed in December, 1994, at the hearing on Lynott's objection to the trustee's proposed compromise.