By judgment rendered on or about November 29, 1988 defendant was convicted in this court, upon his plea of guilty, of driving while ability impaired (Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1192 [1]). Defendant now petitions for a writ of error coram nobis vacating that conviction on the ground of ineffective assistance of counsel. For the reasons that follow, the petition is denied.

This court initially was of the belief that this application is properly cast as a motion pursuant to CPL article 440, which enumerates grounds upon which a judgment of conviction may be vacated. Indeed, as the court reads the supporting affirmation, defendant principally seeks vacatur based on the alleged ineffective assistance of prior defense counsel—a ground, of course, enumerated in and covered by CPL 440.10 (see CPL 440.10 [1] [h]).^[FN1]

To the extent the request sounds in a motion pursuant to CPL article 440, the court notes [*2]that the application typically would be the subject of a hearing (see CPL 440.30 [5]; People v Henderson, 28 NY3d 63, 66 [2016]). Here, however, defendant suggests that prior defense counsel was ineffective for failing "to contemplate the drastic change of DMV policy concerning license revocation policy due to the fact that the [DMV] has changed its regulations." That contention, to this court, appears to distill a complaint that prior defense counsel failed to exercise clairvoyance with respect to a future shift in law. Inasmuch as counsel cannot, however, be ineffective merely for failing to anticipate a change in the law (see People v Schrock, 99 AD3d 1196, 1197 [4th Dept 2012]), this court questions how this application, should it have been made pursuant to CPL article 440, would not be denied without a hearing (see CPL 440.30 [4] [a]).

Against that backdrop, and likely in recognition of the challenges presented on a motion pursuant to CPL article 440, defense counsel intentionally cast this application as a petition for a writ of error coram nobis. "Most of the common-law, coram nobis types of relief were abrogated when the Criminal Procedure Law was enacted" (People v Andrews, 23 NY3d 605, 610 [2014]; see People v Corso, 40 NY2d 578, 580 [1976]). But, the court acknowledges, as an historical matter, "the ancient writ of 'error coram nobis' [has been] used by courts to correct errors for which no other avenue of judicial relief was apparent" (Andrews, 23 NY3d at 610; see People v Hairston, 10 NY2d 92, 93-94 [1961]).

No matter the nature of the application, the court questions whether the relief sought can be granted. Assuming defendant may properly bring this petition, the court notes that a writ of this nature is used to correct errors for which no other avenue of judicial relief is apparent. This is not an instance in which an error was made by prior defense counsel, and instead is one in which defendant has been negatively affected by a change in the law following the instant conviction.

That change in the law is one with respect to which defendant may not have struggled had he not been convicted of what the court understands to be another violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law § 1192. Much as "[i]gnorance of the law is no excuse" (People v Marrero, 69 NY2d 382, 385 [1987]), in this court's view ignorance of a potential change in the law is of no comfort to defendant. It may be that an intermediate appellate court, vested with powers inaccessible to this body (see CPL 470.15 [6] [a]), engages in a balancing of the "menace to highway safety" posed by the "very serious crime" of "[d]riving while intoxicated" (People v Washington, 23 NY3d 228, 231 [2014] [internal quotation marks omitted]) with licensing consequences perhaps unique to defendant and reaches a determination with respect to vacatur different from the conclusion drawn by this body (see generally People v Williams, 145 AD3d 100, 107 [1st Dept 2016]). Under these circumstances however, this court concludes that there is no ground upon which to grant defendant the requested relief.

Accordingly, for all of the foregoing reasons, the petition for a writ of error coram nobis is denied.