ALVIN LOVE & another [Note 1] vs. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION & another. [Note 2]

The plaintiffs, Alvin Love and Robert P. Lena, both inmates at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, at Norfolk, have appealed from a judgment

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of a single justice of this court denying their petition for relief pursuant to G. L. c. 211, Section 3 (1992 ed.). In their petition, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendants had improperly applied regulations to deny them the opportunity to acquire word processors with disk storage capabilities, and the plaintiffs requested that a preliminary injunction issue in the Superior Court "to prevent the [d]efendants from denying the [p]laintiffs the right to purchase, order, receive, and retain, as personal property, personal word processors." A judge in the Superior Court had denied the preliminary injunction requested by the plaintiffs, and a single justice of the Appeals Court, acting on the plaintiffs' petition pursuant to G. L. c. 231, Section 118, first par. (1992 ed.), denied relief because the petition had not been timely filed and "present[ed] no issue of the propriety of the original [Superior Court] order." Both the Superior Court judge and the single justice of the Appeals Court also denied motions for reconsideration.

Based on the record before him, the rulings made in the Superior and Appeals Courts, and the established principles governing the availability of relief under G. L. c. 211, Section 3, see Pandey v. Superior Court, 412 Mass. 1001, 1001-1002 (1992), and cases cited, the single justice acted well within his discretion in concluding that the case presented no occasion to exercise the court's extraordinary authority to grant the preliminary injunction requested by the plaintiffs.

Judgment affirmed.