Judge Disciplined for Friendship with Lawyer

By Cheryl Miller
w York Lawyer
The Recorder
January 10, 2007

The Commission on Judicial Performance has publicly admonished a retired judge for failing to disclose his chummy relationship with the prevailing plaintiff's attorney in a $94.5 million inverse condemnation suit.

Former San Diego County Superior Court Judge Vincent DiFiglia should have told the defendants in the 2001 case that he had a long-term friendship with the plaintiff's co-counsel, Vincent Bartolotta Jr., commissioners said.

DiFiglia, who retired in 2003, also violated a judicial canon by failing to disclose publicly that he had once worked for the defendant's counsel, the San Diego city attorney's office, the commission wrote.

The CJP had already privately chastised DiFiglia in 1992 for allowing Bartolotta and his law partner to pay for the judge's play in golf tournaments, and then failing to tell other attorneys in his court about his relationship with the two lawyers.

Chief Appeals Judge Steps Down
Charles J. Kahn Jr., Accused of Appearing
 to Aid a Former Senator, Loses "Chief."

By Lucy Morgan
ST. Petersburg Times
November 18, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - Florida's largest appellate court has quietly replaced its chief judge amid internal rancor and suggestions of political influence surrounding the bribery conviction and prison sentence of former Sen. W.D. Childers.

Charles J. Kahn Jr., elected in 2005 to head the 1st District Court of Appeal for two years, resigned the chief judge's job last month in the face of a revolt by fellow judges.

A formal complaint alleging misconduct has been lodged against Kahn, documents obtained Friday by the St. Petersburg Times indicate.

In a written opinion denying Childers' appeal of his bribery conviction, another judge suggested that the public might conclude that Kahn was trying to reverse Childers' conviction as a political favor.

In 1991, at the time Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed Kahn to the court, he was a law partner of Fred Levin, a prominent trial lawyer who is extremely close to Childers.

In 1994, Levin, Childers and Chiles hatched a plan to sneak a law through the Legislature that allowed the state to sue tobacco companies and collect $13-billion to repay the costs of providing health care to smokers who depend on Medicaid.

Childers was a major player on the state's political stage for more than 30 years, wheeling and dealing as Senate president and chairman of important committees.

Often dressed in bright pink or green jackets on the floor of the Senate, Childers was adept at taking home the bacon for his West Florida district. He got fellow legislators to include money in the state budget for a new football stadium at the University of West Florida - a school with no football team.

Forced by term limits to leave the Senate in 2000, he won election to the Escambia County Commission. He was charged with delivering a cooking pot filled with cash to fellow Commissioner Willie Junior in return for his vote on a $4.1-million land purchase.

Junior testified against Childers, who was convicted of bribery. Before Childers' appeal was decided, Junior was found under a house; the coroner concluded that Junior killed himself by drinking antifreeze.

Childers' appeal

Childers appealed his conviction and 3½-year prison sentence to the 1st District Court of Appeal.

A three-judge panel headed by Kahn voted 2-1 to overturn Childers' conviction. Kahn drafted the opinion focusing on limits the trial judge set on cross- examination of Junior.

That's when things turned unusual: The other judges on the court decided to all hear the case, "en banc," over the vehement objection of Kahn and the other two judges on the panel. The full court voted 10-4 to uphold the conviction.

Childers' lawyers asked the appeal court to refer the case to the Florida Supreme Court to determine the legality of having the entire 1st District vote.

In late June, again by a 10-4 vote, the 1st District rejected Childers' appeal. Judge Michael E. Allen attached an opinion defending the decision to have the entire court review the case. Allen said he was concerned that Kahn's involvement would lead to "public perceptions of partiality by this court."

Attaching newspaper articles that described the friendship between Levin and Childers, Allen said some Floridians might believe that Levin and Childers influenced Kahn's attempt to overturn the conviction.

Allen noted that probably would leave Childers free because Junior is no longer available to testify.

"And the deciding vote would have been cast by Fred Levin's former law partner," Allen wrote. "The threat this case presented to the reputation of this court, in my judgment, made it a case of exceptional importance. ...

"We should never perform our responsibilities in a manner that would cause the public to question the impartiality of our decisions," Allen wrote. "Yet I believe that is precisely what Judge Kahn did by failing, on his own motion, to recuse himself from consideration in this case."

Kahn says it's for best

Contacted Thursday, Kahn would not discuss the reason he resigned as chief judge except to say he thought it was best for the court. He remains on the court.

Kahn said he has not maintained a relationship with Levin since he was appointed to the court 16 years ago. He said he does not review cases involving the Levin law firm.

Levin said Friday that he asked Chiles to appoint Kahn to the court but said he has rarely seen him in the past 16 years.

"I went to his father's funeral, and he attended my brother's funeral, but that's about all," Levin said.

Levin said he believes the judges targeted him for criticism because they are jealous of the large fees many lawyers make. On the tobacco case, Levin will collect fees of about $200-million over 25 years.

Judge Edwin B. Browning Jr., the new chief judge at the 1st District, did not return telephone calls. Documents Browning released say that Kahn's fellow judges met in early October to discuss "concerns within the court over leadership and personal relationships within the court." Kahn appeared at the meeting and resigned.

Misconduct allegations against a judge generally are handled by the Judicial Qualifications Commission and remain secret until formal charges are brought.

On Thursday, in response to a request from 12 of the judges at the 1st District, Kahn was removed from the District Court of Appeal Budget Commission.

Childers, who turns 73 next week, is serving his sentence at Glades Correctional Institution in South Florida.

Said Levin: "Knowing W.D., he's king of whatever prison he's in."

NY Judge Takes Stand To Defend Conduct In Murder Trial

By Tom Perrotta
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
August 23, 2006

A state Supreme Court justice yesterday said that his former law clerk was telling "lies" when she accused him last year of having an improper ex parte conversation with a prosecutor before a murder trial.

The judge, Justice Jaime A. Rios, was testifying at an unusual hearing in Queens Supreme Court yesterday to determine if Tyrone Johnson, a convicted murderer sentenced to 20 years in prison, deserves a new trial.

In 2003, Mr. Johnson was convicted of murdering nightclub owner Leroy Vann. He had been convicted of the same crime a year earlier, but his conviction was thrown out because a former Queens prosecutor, Claude Stuart, lied to Justice Rios about the whereabouts of a witness.

Justice Rios, who now sits in Supreme Court, Civil Term, presided over Mr. Johnson's second trial, too. Mr. Stuart has since been suspended from the practice of law for three years. The second trial was handled by Assistant District Attorney Eugene Reibstein.

Questions about the second trial arose when the judge's former principle law clerk, Judith B. Memblatt, claimed last year that she overheard a December 2002 conversation between the judge and Mr. Reibstein, in which the judge coached the prosecutor about how to handle a flawed witness.

Ms. Memblatt, who took notes of the conversations on Post-It notes, accused the judge of impropriety shortly after she was fired in April 2005.

She complained to the Commission on Judicial Conduct and has also filed federal civil rights charges against the judge in the Eastern District of New York, and has accused him of having an affair with a former prosecutor. The Queens District Attorney's Office has dismissed her claims as those of a disgruntled former employee.

Under questioning yesterday from Ronald L. Kuby, Mr. Johnson's new attorney, Justice Rios admitted that he spoke to Mr. Reibstein both before and after Mr. Johnson's second trial.

But he told Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew J. D'Emic, who presided over yesterday's hearing, that those conversations amounted to "small talk." Justice Rios and Mr. Reibstein once worked together in the Queens District Attorney's Office. The judge said they are acquaintances, not friends and never associate.

Before the trial, the judge said, Mr. Reibstein had stopped by chambers to give a "heads up" that he would not be ready for trial, and that the defense counsel, Allen Brenner, had consented to an adjournment.

Justice Rios said he could not recall any further details of that conversation, but suggested it was nothing more than ordinary banter that lasted for "10 to 15 minutes."

"I was being polite," the judge said. "I wasn't going to tell him to leave."

Mr. Reibstein, who testified in the afternoon, said the judge did say that he had doubts about a witness, Henry Hanley, who testified in the first trial, recanted his testimony, and finally recanted his recantation.

But Mr. Reibstein said he interpreted the judge's comment as an understanding of why Mr. Reibstein needed more time to prepare the case.

"Oh good, he understands I'm going to need time," Mr. Reibstein said, recalling his reaction.

In the post-trial conversation, Justice Rios said, Mr. Reibstein stopped by to thank him for a "fair and efficient trial." The judge said he could have made a comment about the Appellate Division, Second Department, possibly having a problem with Mr. Reibstein's closing arguments, but the judge said he could not recall details of the conversation.

Mr. Reibstein testified that the judge did make such a remark. The judge, he said, suggested that the appeals court might think that Mr. Reibstein had vouched for witnesses. He said the comment surprised him.

"I remember thinking, 'What is he talking about?'" Mr. Reibstein said. "I didn't vouch for a single witness."

He said he told Justice Rios, "I don't think I have any problem with that at all."

Mr. Reibstein later added that he had no regrets about either conversation.

Mr. Kuby pressed Justice Rios on the substance of the conversations and whether the judge discussed Mr. Hanley and several crime scene photographs.

The photographs showed cars parked in a driveway where Mr. Vann was murdered. Mr. Hanley testified that Mr. Vann had moved the cars prior to being killed. He changed his testimony at the second trial.

Mr. Kuby's questioning produced a few sharp exchanges.
When he began asking Justice Rios about a draft complaint he had written concerning possible misconduct by Mr. Brenner, the defense attorney, the judge asserted "law clerk judicial privilege."

Justice Rios' attorney, Michael S. Ross, who was watching from the jury box, interjected, noting that the privilege would apply since Justice Rios had given his draft to Ms. Memblatt for her comment. The letter was never sent to the grievance committee.

Later, Mr. Kuby asked the judge if he would waive his privilege with the Commission on Judicial Conduct and discuss any responses he made to the agency.

Mr. Ross objected before Mr. Kuby could finish his question.

"It's argumentative and intended for the people in the audience," Mr. Ross said.

Justice Rios did not waive the privilege.

Earlier in the day, Ms. Memblatt testified under sharp questioning from Assistant District Attorney Charles A. Testagrossa.

Ms. Memblatt, who is an attorney, admitted that she photocopied documents without Justice Rios' permission.

"So you were stealing," Mr. Testagrossa said.

Mr. Kuby objected. Mr. Testagrossa also asked Ms. Memblatt if she "was acquainted with the definition of larceny?"

Later, he questioned Ms. Memblatt about other complaints she had filed against judges, and her allegations that court officials, including Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, had played a role in her firing.

"You really believe that?" Mr. Testagrossa asked.

"Absolutely," Ms. Memblatt said.

Judge Reprimanded for Relations with Lawyer
James Adams Admitted Misconduct

By Paul Flemming
Tallahassee Democrat
June 8, 2006

Lee County Judge James Adams got a public talking to Wednesday from Florida's chief justice and was told to go try to repair his reputation after admitting to carrying on a two-month affair with an attorney who had cases before him.

''Judge Adams, when you indulged in a romantic relationship with an attorney practicing before you, you placed the public trust in jeopardy,'' Chief Justice Barbara Pariente said to Adams, who stood silently before her and the six justices of the state's highest court. ''You compromised the single most important source of your authority, the perception of the legal community and the public that a judge is impartial in deciding cases.''

The 50-year-old Lee County judge has served on the bench since 1992. He is unopposed in a November reinstatement campaign.

Adams admitted his misconduct in an agreement with the Judicial Qualifications Commission after a complaint filed against him by the now-ex-husband of the woman, Kennetha Lynn Donohue.

The commission found, and Adams admitted, that he granted continuances in a number of cases represented by Donohue and dismissed traffic cases against clients of Donohue.

This ''gave the appearance of impropriety,'' the commission found.

Adams' affair with Donohue lasted from late September to the middle of November 2004. The commission said ''the relationship, though inappropriate, was short-lived.''

Pariente said Wednesday that it was only appearances that had been violated.

''A review of the record reveals no evidence that the relationship actually influenced your actions in any of the cases,'' Pariente said.

That, coupled with Adams' otherwise spotless record and his acceptance of full responsibility for his misdeeds, resulted in the official reprimand instead of harsher treatment.

Pariente is concluding her two-year term as chief justice of the Supreme Court. In that time, the court - final arbiter of judicial misconduct cases - has removed two judges and reprimanded six, including Adams.

Reading from a prepared text, Pariente said Adams' behavior harmed his own reputation, but also those of other judges.

''Much excellent work and good will generated by our judges can be undermined by the misconduct of a few,'' she said. ''Each public reprimand saddens me. Each is regrettable.

         Lee Judge to Be Admonished by State Supreme Court

By Aaron Deslatte
Tallahassee Democrat
May 18, 2006

TALLAHASSEE FL - The state Supreme Court will publicly admonish Lee County Judge James R. Adams next month for his romance with a lawyer practicing before his court.

Florida's high court today ordered Adams to appear June 7 for the public reprimand, but declined to impose a stiffer punishment for granting dismissals and continuances in cases lawyer Kennetha Lynn Donahue had in his court.

"A judge who enters into a romantic relationship with a lawyer who practices before the judge, and then continues to preside over matters in which the lawyer appears as counsel, transgresses the Code of Judiciary Conduct in both letter and spirit," the state court wrote.

"Judge Adams failed to maintain the high standards of conduct necessary to preserve the integrity of the judiciary," the seven Supreme Court justices unanimously opined, " ... his conduct tended to create the impression that he allowed a personal relationship to influence his judgment ... and that he would have difficulty performing his judicial duties fairly and without bias."

Ken Kellum, court operations manager for the 20th judicial circuit that includes Lee County, said Adams planned to release a public statement sometime before his reprimand in Tallahassee next month, but would have no further comment.

"He still intends to put out a statement but hasn't issued it yet," Kellum said.

Donahue could not be reached for comment.

Adams admitted to state investigators that for two months in 2004 he had a romantic relationship with Donahue, and that he granted "a considerable number" of continuances in five cases Donahue had in his court. In four other traffic cases Donahue handled, Adams dismissed the charges.

According to the investigative findings, Adams admits, "he granted a number of continuances at the request of the lawyer with whom he had a romantic relationship, thereby causing his impartiality to be brought into question."

The Supreme Court can impose much sterner punishments, including fines, suspensions or removal from the bench, but acknowledged in its order that there was no proof Adams had let his personal relationship
influence the outcome of cases.

"If evidence had demonstrated that the relationship affected the disposition of any matter before the judge, we would not hesitate to impose stiffer discipline," the court wrote.

A Judge's Affair Has Ex-hubby Seething

By Sam Cook
news-press.com
May 14, 2006

The judge is ashamed.
The mistress isn't talking.
The ex-husband is outraged.

James R. Adams, 50, a Lee County judge since 1992, is scheduled to receive a public reprimand June 7 from the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee for ethical misconduct with a Fort Myers attorney.

Kennetha Lynn Donohue Rhodes, 37, a defense attorney locally since 2001, had a romantic relationship with Adams in 2004 while routinely handling a number of cases in the judge's court.

Thomas Donohue, 45, was married to Rhodes at the time of the affair. He filed an ethics complaint against Adams with the state Judicial

Qualifications Commission in January 2005. The
Adams Lee County Judge      JQC announced its  recommendation in February.

"I've never had a complaint filed against me as a judge,'' Adams says. "It's uncomfortable and embarrassing. It's my own doing. I'll never do it again.''

Adams granted Rhodes numerous continuances in five cases and dismissed charges against four more of her defendants in traffic cases.

Donohue says the JQC reprimand is a slap on the hand and Adams should be removed from the bench for his transgressions.

"I'm not just an irate husband hurt by his wife,'' says Donohue, a 1980 Fort Myers High graduate and former commercial fisherman. "I was married to her for 11 years when this happened. I was betrayed by a judge.

"A judge is supposed to be held to a higher standard.''

Investigators found Adams violated canons 1, 2 and 3 of the Judicial Code of Conduct.

Adams should have disclosed a relationship with Rhodes and recused himself from her cases.

The JQC report says Adams accepts full responsibility for his conduct, admits it shouldn't have occurred and regrets and apologizes for conduct giving the appearance of impropriety.

"The Investigative Panel in reaching this agreement notes that Judge Adams' record as a judge is previously unblemished, he is active in his community, and the relationship, although inappropriate, was short-lived extending from late September 2004 to mid-November 2004,'' says the report.

Adams says he and the JQC panel reached an agreement on punishment, but Donohue says the reprimand trivializes the affair and he asked the Florida Supreme Court to reject it.

"The judge never apologized to me,'' Donohue says. "He's only regretful and remorseful because I found out. If I hadn't found out, he'd still be going out with her.''

Donohue says he hired a private investigator who pulled cell phone records and cross-referenced calls between Rhodes and Adams. Donohue confronted his wife Nov. 18, but Rhodes told him she and Adams were just friends.

"Several days later, she broke down and admitted she had a sexual relationship with him,'' Donohue says. "My ex-wife also told me she would do or say anything to protect their careers.''

Rhodes, who was divorced from Donohue on Aug. 15, 2005, refused an opportunity to comment May 3 at her office.

Adams, who has been an attorney and then a judge in Lee County since 1983, says he understands Donohue's bitterness, but doesn't believe his mistakes call for his removal from the bench.

"It was a relationship of a very short duration,'' Adams says. "Six weeks. I had inappropriate contact with her. I regret it.''

Adams, who says he's been divorced six years, most regrets his 2004 misconduct mars a spotless and stellar record.

The judge, known for his even temperament, has always stood tall in the community.

Adams' outreach ranges from umpiring Little League games to setting up a night court so traffic scofflaws wouldn't miss work.

"It tarnishes my record, but it'll be my last complaint,'' he says.

Alva's John Shearer Jr. has been on both sides of the bench. He served as circuit judge for five years and was a longtime defense attorney before retiring.

Is the public reprimand fair punishment for Adams?

"Yeah, that's about all you can do to the guy,'' Shearer says. "He's embarrassed as he can get.''

He says ethics is a ticklish concept to determine.

"When I was on the bench, my wife, one of them anyway, worked for a law firm,'' Shearer says.
"Was I supposed to recuse myself every time a lawyer from her firm came before me?

"I don't think so. I thought I was fair, but I don't really have an answer to that.''

Shearer says Adams or Rhodes should have come clean in court, but affairs go on every day.

"I don't think Judge Adams would have done anything judicially to help (Rhodes) because he was having sex with her,'' Shearer says. "But (Donohue) won't believe it because the judge was digging in his flower garden.

"Death wouldn't be sufficient (punishment) for the husband.''

Donohue doesn't want the death penalty, just Adams' removal from a county bench.

"Whether you're having an affair with a lawyer or a Circle K girl, it's immoral and unethical,'' Donohue says. "The sad thing about our society is people don't feel an affair is wrong.''

Judge Resigns After Allegedly
Cashing In on Fen-Phen Settlement

By Roger Alford
New York Lawyer
The Associated Press
February 27, 2006

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A northern Kentucky judge has resigned rather than face removal for allegedly profiting from a $200 million settlement involving the diet drug fen-phen, a state judicial panel said Monday.

Judge Joseph F. Bamberger was publicly reprimanded Monday by the state's Judicial Conduct Commission, which said his actions "shock the conscience."

Bamberger, who resigned Feb. 24, was a senior status special judge, a retired jurist who could be assigned to certain cases.

In a letter of reprimand, the commission said the judge gave attorneys, including one of his personal friends, somewhere between $86 million and $104 million from the 2001 settlement.

In addition, Bamberger allowed more than $20 million from the settlement to be put into a charitable fund, and then he became a paid director of the fund, receiving $5,000 a month plus a $350 monthly expense allowance.

That left the 431 plaintiffs involved in the settlement to split about $74 million. More than 300 of the plaintiffs have sued three lawyers in the case.

"If the violations described in this order had been proved at a hearing, the commission would have removed Judge Bamberger from his office as senior status special judge," commissioners said in the reprimand.

There was no immediate comment from Bamberger, who was a circuit judge in Boone and Gallatin counties for 12 years. Calls to his home in Florence were not answered Monday.

The fenfluramine half of fen-phen was pulled from the market in September 1997 by drugmaker Wyeth amid reports some users had heart valve damage and a few had a deadly lung condition. Fen-phen was never an FDA-approved combination. The phentermine half remained on the market.

By Daniel Wise
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
February 23, 2006

An arbitration award cannot survive where the arbitrator went out to lunch with one of the parties' lawyers and that lawyer's firm provided the arbitrator with a conference room and legal research free of charge in an unrelated case, a bankruptcy judge in Manhattan ruled last week.

The arbitrator, former U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Francis G. Conrad, had resolved a real-estate dispute in favor of a landlord of the debtor, but Southern District Bankruptcy Judge Prudence Carter Beatty overturned the award, finding that Mr. Conrad's actions gave "the appearance of partiality."

Judge Beatty's decision In re First Quality Realty, 02-14758, set aside Mr. Conrad's arbitration ruling which had barred the debtor, First Quality Realty, from converting four floors of a Brooklyn building it had rented from commercial to residential use.

In addition to finding an appearance of partiality, Justice Beatty observed that Mr. Conrad's acknowledged practice of asking law and accounting firms for free use of facilities to host an arbitration might "in and of itself, be improper."

Mr. Conrad said that as a court-appointed neutral he could not comment on the decision.

Mr. Conrad, who served a full-14 year term on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Vermont before leaving the bench in 1999, was selected as arbitrator by agreement of the parties. He was chosen from a registry maintained by the Southern District Bankruptcy Court.

Judge Beatty cautioned that her opinion should not be read as finding that Mr. Conrad was, in fact, biased. Instead, she wrote, his actions could cause a reasonable person to conclude that he had created an "appearance of partiality."

She enumerated several actions that could give rise to an appearance of bias:

• On days when there were arbitration sessions, Mr. Conrad went out to lunch regularly with an attorney for the landlord and persons representing his client, Reva Holding Corp.

• The law firm representing the landlord, Westerman, Ball, Ederer, Miller & Scharfstein, provided gratis at the request of Mr. Conrad two conference rooms and legal research to support a mediation in an unrelated case in the Eastern District Bankruptcy Court. The mediation occurred over several days in December 2004, while the parties in the Southern District case were awaiting Mr. Conrad's decision.
• Mr. Conrad was hired to represent the principal of another corporation that had filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District. That company also was represented by Westerman Ball.

• While the arbitration was pending, Mr. Conrad was selected to mediate an Eastern District bankruptcy case where one party was represented by Westerman Ball.
The appearance of bias was furthered because, despite an affirmative duty, Judge Beatty wrote, Mr. Conrad had not disclosed to the debtor his other business dealings with Westerman Ball (as lawyer, mediator and user of its facilities).

With respect to the lunches, Mr. Conrad had asked the debtor's attorney if he objected to Mr. Conrad having lunch with the landlord's lawyer, Jeffrey Miller of Westerman Ball.

The fact that Mr. Conrad asked the debtor's attorney, Abraham J. Backenroth, if "he minded the lunch arrangements" was immaterial, Judge Beatty wrote, because "no one in Backenroth's position could ever truthfully answer that question without worrying about raising the ire of the arbitrator presiding over his or her matter."

By accepting employment in a matter involving Westerman Ball, Judge Beatty added, Mr. Conrad had assumed a direct interest "for both his client and in connection with his own fees" in a matter involving a law firm for a party to an arbitration pending before him.

Improper 'Courtesies'

Judge Beatty expressed particular concern over Mr. Conrad's practice of asking law and accounting firms to provide space and supportive services, free of charge, for his mediations and arbitrations.

In an affidavit, Mr. Conrad had stated that because he did not have his own conference room, it was his "custom" to request from law and accounting firms the use of conference rooms without charge. Firms letting him use their space, he added in the affidavit, also provided "legal research, administrative, secretarial, fax, and telephone services, gratis to the mediating parties and me."

Judge Beatty wrote that in requesting and accepting the free use of facilities, Mr. Conrad failed "to recognize that it is his very position as a former judge which may cause these firms to agree to his requests in the first place."

She wrote in a footnote that "former judges are not entitled to accept services that they would otherwise have to pay for by virtue of their former public office." In another footnote, Judge Beatty stated her belief that "such 'courtesies' should be monetarily compensated by the Arbitrator."

The debtor, First Quality Realty, was represented by Gerald A. Novack and Kathryn C. Plunkett of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham. Mr. Backenroth and Mark A. Frankel of Backenroth Frankel and Krinsky represented First Quality at the mediation.

In addition to Mr. Miller, the landlord, Reva Holding, was represented by Mickee M. Hennessy, also of Westerman Ball.

Did Fling Blind Judge? Legal Eagles Eye Appeals

By Scott Shifrel
New York Daily News
November 20, 2005

An allegation about an illicit affair between a judge and a prosecutor has defense lawyers scrambling to check their files for what could turn into a flood of appeals, the Daily News has learned.

Lawyers who had cases before Queens Supreme Court Justice Jaime Rios when he allegedly was seeing prosecutor Meryl Lutsky in 1996 and 1997 tell The News the affair charge is troubling and convictions involving their clients need to be reviewed.

"I can't say anything about the validity of the accusations [of the relationship], but I have to at least investigate," defense lawyer Warren Silverman said. "If a judge has a close relationship with one of the parties, then it is improper for the judge to handle the case. If true, he should have recused himself."

Silverman represented a Queens woman in a 1996 drug case heard by Rios. His client ended up serving two years behind bars.

Lutsky worked regularly as an assistant district attorney in Rios' courtroom, appearing mostly on motions to suppress evidence or statements.

"There's no question that any conviction obtained where both the judge and Ms. Lutsky were involved in should be reviewed," defense lawyer Todd Greenberg said. "If the allegation is borne out to be true, then the court system should look at these cases."

Greenberg said one of his clients, Kishore Sumasar, 29, served three years on a drug charge after appearing before Rios. He plans to order the archived court records next week.

The affair allegation was made by the judge's ex-law secretary, Judith Memblatt. Defense lawyer Ron Kuby cited the alleged affair when he sought a new trial for a convicted murderer.

Kuby is arguing that Rios' relationship with Lutsky led the judge to coach another prosecutor, Eugene Reibstein, to help him convict Kuby's client in 2003.

Rios, through a spokesman, repeatedly has declined to comment because the murder case is still pending. Lutsky also has declined to comment.

Memblatt, 47, who was fired by Rios in 2004, made the allegation in a $10 million wrongful-termination lawsuit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court and in a complaint to the Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Judge Accused of Bedding ADA

By Scott Shifrel
New York Daily News
November 16, 2005

Fired aide Judith Memblatt has accused Queens judge Jaime Rios of having an improper affair with prosecutor. A Queens judge was in bed with the district attorney's office - literally, his ex-law secretary has charged in a $10 million dollar suit. The explosive allegation, which already has come to the attention of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, could lead to a new trial for a convicted murderer, a prominent defense attorney said yesterday. "A judge is required to be a neutral arbiter, not a secret, second prosecutor helping to convict the defendant," said defense lawyer Ronald Kuby. Kuby filed court papers claiming state Supreme Court Justice Jaime Rios, 59, had an "improper sexual relationship" with an assistant district attorney that led the judge to help prosecutors win a second conviction against accused killer Tyrone Johnson in 2003. Rios' relationship with then-Assistant District Attorney Meryl Lutsky was first alleged in a complaint filed last year with the Commission on Judicial Conduct by Judith Memblatt, the judge's former legal assistant. Memblatt, 47, who was fired by Rios in 2004, followed up the complaint to the commission with a wrongful termination lawsuit in Brooklyn Federal Court that makes the same charges. In the disciplinary case, Memblatt said the affair dated back to 1996. She added Lutsky "clearly implied to me that they did have a sexual relationship." Lutsky resigned as prosecutor in 2000 to go to work for state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. But Kuby claims that Rios' relationship with Lutsky and the Queens district attorney's office stacked the deck against Johnson, whose initial conviction for killing the owner of an after-hours club was overturned in 2002. According to Kuby, Rios and prosecutor Eugene Reibstein met in the judge's chambers where he coached the assistant by "suggest[ing] ways that the case against Mr. Johnson should be improved." Rios and Lutsky declined comment. The district attorney's office dismissed the allegations as a rehash by a "disgruntled former court system employee."                        Axed Aide: Judge Disrobed with Da By Alex Ginsberg, Ikimulisa Livingston and Cynthia R. Fagen New York Post November 16, 2005 A married Queens judge carried on a torrid affair with a female prosecutor while handing out special favors to the DA's office, including tips on how to win a murder trial, his former secretary claims. Judith Memblatt says she was fired after she charged that her former boss, Supreme Court Justice Jaime Rios, was "unfit to sit as a judge" because of an inappropriate affair with Assistant DA Meryl Lutsky. Memblatt chronicled the alleged relationship because she was worried it was undermining the rights of defendants prose-cuted in Rios' court, she told The Post yesterday. TRYSTED TALE: A fired secretary claims Justice Jaime Rios had an affair with        In another stunning allegation, Memblatt said ex-Assistant DA Meryl Lutsky (above) and  that Rios also acted as "an unofficial adviser" secretly aided prosecutor Eugene              to members of the Queens DA's office as a favor Reibstein. Lutsky, at her office yesterday,   for ignoring his affair with Lutsky. calls the claims "ridiculous." Photo: Matthew McDermott                        "Basically, they were willing to do anything to rush to the judge's side and cover for him rather than determine if there was a real impropriety. That kind of put them in the position of covering for the judge. He was beholden to them," Memblatt told The Post. Memblatt said there were even incidents in court when Rios openly flirted with Lutsky and on one occasion boldly asked his alleged lover "how many bedrooms there were in her apartment." "They both immediately started giggling," Memblatt wrote in a letter to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which eventually told her they did not wish to launch an investigation. She also said that Lutsky and Rios went missing from court "at length and returned to the courtroom almost simultaneously." Memblatt said she made copies of his desk calendar. She said Rios would scribble "Meryl Monday" and an "M" next to two dates, July 12 and 13, on a 1996 calendar that he kept. A "K" on his calendar referred to his wife, Kathleen Pizarro. Memblatt said Rios also secretly coached prosecutor Eugene Reibstein without the defense attorney present in a controversial murder case that resulted in a conviction. "When I saw Mr. Reibstein enter the chambers, and when I heard what the judge was discussing, I was just sick to my stomach over it," she said. Lawyers for convicted murderer Tyrone Johnson are now requesting a retrial in the fatal shooting of nightclub owner LeRoy Vann in 2000. Johnson's mother, Dorethea, said she was horrified when she learned the allegations. "I thought he was a fair judge, but he was not. Give my son back to me, leave us alone," the incensed woman said. "It should be dismissed. They did too many things that are wrong." But Queens DA Richard Brown said the defendant's conviction was properly obtained. The legal secretary is now suing her former boss in federal court for wrongful termination. "This situation so grossly compromised the rights of the defendants and destroyed the integrity of the proceedings that to ignore its existence would have been unethical," she said. Lutsky, 38, who left her ADA job in February 2000, vehemently denied the allegations. "That's ridiculous. It's absolutely untrue," she told The Post. Lutsky said she left after seven years to work in the state attorney general's office in Westchester. "I am categorically denying it. I don't like my name being besmirched," she said, adding that she didn't even recall Memblatt. Neither Rios nor his lawyer returned calls for comment. Reibstein declined comment. Johnson's lawyer, Ron Kuby, said, "Generally, I don't care who Judge Rios is screwing as long as he's not screwing my client. But the conclusion that Judith has drawn is that the judge's long-term improper sexual relationship created the conditions of favoritism to the DA's office." Additional reporting by Jennifer Fermino

State Commission on Judicial Conduct
Disciplines Judge James R. Pastrick

September 6, 2005

Key excepts from the decision are as follows:

"As found by the Commission, Judge Pastrick raised the subject of his daughter’s employment in a conversation with a store employee about court business. The Commission stated: "While attempting to help his daughter find employment, [the judge] should have been especially careful to avoid any conduct that might convey that he was using his judicial status to further private interests." Instead, by mixing judicial and personal matters, the judge ""appeared to be trading on his judicial office in order to benefit his daughter’’s interests," contrary to the ethical rules."

"The ethical standards prohibit a judge from lending the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others and to avoid even the appearance of impropriety (Sections 100.2 and 100.2[C] of the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct). Respondent violated these provisions by his admitted conduct when, while visiting the Food-Mart to discuss procedures in a bad check case involving the store, he asked a store employee whether there were any positions available, said that his daughter was looking for a job and picked up an application
for her. Later, respondent personally delivered the completed application to the store."

"While attempting to help his daughter find employment, respondent should have been especially careful to avoid any conduct that might convey that he was using his judicial status to further private interests. Instead, by raising the subject of his daughter’’s employment during a conversation with a store employee about court business, respondent appeared to be trading on his judicial office to benefit his daughter’s interests. In that context, respondent’s discussion of procedures in a bad check case involving the store could easily be perceived as an explicit reminder of
his judicial power, intended to intimidate or influence the store’s hiring decision."

"Regardless of respondent’s intent, he should have realized that his  actions on his daughter’s behalf, in which he mixed judicial and personal matters, could be construed as trading on the prestige of the judiciary to advance private interests, in violation of the ethical standards. As the Court of Appeals has stated, judges must recognize that "any actionstaken in the public sphere reflect, whether designedly or not, upon the prestige of the judiciary" and "must assiduously avoid those contacts
which might create even the appearance of impropriety." Matter of Lonschein, 50 NY2d 569, 572, 573 (1980). See also, Matter of McKeon, 1999 Annual Report 117 (Comm. on Judicial Conduct) (judge improperly used the prestige of judicial office to advance private interests by writing a letter on judicial stationery to the corporation counsel of the City of New York, a frequent litigant in his court, seeking to expedite the hiring of a former court employee with whom he had a personal relationship). While respondent’s judgment may have been clouded by a
desire to help his daughter, that does not excuse his ethical transgressions."

The full official decision is at:

http://www.scjc.state.ny.us/Determinations/P/pastrick.htm

Better to Know the Judge
As an Adult Home Deteriorated,
a Veteran Jurist and a Lawyer Shared Cocktails and Dinner

By Tom Robbins
The Village Voice
August 9, 2005

Another report of insider trading in the    Brooklyn courts arrived in late July from the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct. This one produced more sighs than fury. Years after editorial pages had spent their wrath condemning Brooklyn's judicial politics as a school for scandal, here was another censure of another veteran judge for failing to reveal his ties to yet an other politically wired attorney practicing before him. Even the names were predictable.

 Supreme Court Justice Richard Huttner,
Machine challenger: Judge Margarita L. a clubhouse regular, had never told
Torres campaigns for Surrogate's Court  other lawyers in a case he adjudicated
photo: Willie Davis/Veras                            about his clubhouse regular, about his friendship with defense counsel Ravi Batra, former law partner of assemblyman and Democratic county leader Clarence Norman Jr. The panel reported that Huttner neglected to tell plaintiffs that while he was hearing their case he and his wife were having cocktails with Batra and his spouse, or that the judge had also attended a wed ding anniversary and a memorial service with the Batra family. Or that he and the attorney had shared "drinks, lunch, and dinner together on numerous occasions." Or that he thought so highly of Batra he had awarded the lawyer 11 separate fiduciary appointments.

What to do?

Huttner, 70 years old, caught a break. On the proviso that he will permanently retire on December 31, the panel "reluctantly" let him off with censure. Case closed. The report made for a four-inch wire service story in the Times; it never made it past the borough section in the Daily News.

But not since Judge Victor Barron, another clubhouse hack, was caught demanding $115,000 to fix the case of a maimed three-month-old baby has a story penetrated so near to the rotten heart of Brooklyn's judicial politics.

Batra's appearance before Huttner was on behalf of a wretchedly deteriorated adult home run by Norman's father, Re verend Clarence Norman Sr., pastor of one of Brooklyn's largest churches. In Baisden et al. v. Pacific House Residence for Adults, lawyers for the home's residents, most of them the formerly homeless with varying degrees of mental problems, were seeking to block Norman Sr.'s efforts to sell the building and evict them. At the time, Reverend Norman was trying, with Batra's help, to stay one step ahead of state regulators who were being forced to act on years of complaints of callous care and grievous conditions at the home.

When I visited Pacific House in the summer of 2000 while the case was before Huttner, residents were aimlessly roaming the streets ("A Ministry of Neglect," June 28––July 4, 2000). Several told me they were terrified about what would befall them. The most cogent understood exactly what was going on. One woman, Clara Taylor, had formed a residents' council, which had sought out legal services attorneys. Taylor had personally confronted Norman Sr. about the situation. The reverend had pled poverty. While the home collected $60,000 a month from the residents' disability checks, he said he was hobbled by a poor cash flow. Additional government grants had been denied after inspectors found rampant vermin, unsanitary bathrooms, and poor care.

Taylor had also cornered the reverend's son when the assemblyman attended a street fair near the home. She had pointed to a urine-soaked resident, sitting mumbling and untended on a nearby stoop. "I asked him if he would help. He said, 'I'm glad you're concerned,' and promised to speak to his father," Taylor told me.

But when I got Assemblyman Norman on the phone that summer he said that his only involvement was to ask his partner Batra to represent his father. Batra got results. Before Huttner, the lawyer was able to win his client sufficient breathing room to negotiate a sale of his property minus its troubled residents, who were dispersed elsewhere in the city to another politically tied organization. It was "a graceful exit," Batra told me then.

Later this month, after long delays, Assemblyman Norman is finally due to go to trial on the first of four indictments brought against him by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. The county leader stands accused of double billing for his gas receipts, failing to disclose a $2,700 in-

kind contribution from a lobbyist, misfiling a $5,000 campaign check, and compelling judicial candidates to use favored vendors.

Several of the charges appear shaky. But on any moral scale, they are far outweighed by the outrage of Pacific House and the casual use of Brooklyn's Democratic judicial-political complex to defend it. Yet no law enforcement office looked to see if there were any penal code violations there. It was considered business as usual; a crassly cynical business perhaps, but not criminal. Meanwhile, conveniently for both Hynes and Norman, the first jury's verdict isn't likely to be heard until after the September 13th primary, thus sparing one or the other a major embarrassment.

That Tuesday, Hynes faces his first competitive race for re-election since he won office in 1989, with three challengers seeking his job. It is an important day for Norman as well. He's hoping his candidate for D.A., an undistinguished, clubhouse-bred state senator from east Brooklyn named John Sampson, can ride a tide of African American votes to unseat Hynes. Another important goal for the embattled leader is to try to hold on to the Surrogate's Court judgeship, the single most lucrative judicial post in the borough. The position had been held by another Norman candidate, Judge Michael Feinberg, who bizarrely won the open seat in 1996 on a reform platform. Feinberg even won the Times' endorsement that year, telling its editorial board he would have a panel "screen appointments and recommend changes in how the place was run."

Of course he did no such thing. He immediately appointed a longtime Norman ally, East Flatbush Democratic district leader Marietta Small, as public administrator, a job that calls for competence and sensitivity in the handling of estates of the deceased. Small brought neither to the job. Two separate audits have chastised Small, who still holds her $91,000-a-year post, with bungling multiple cases and losing track of assets.

For the profitable job of counsel to the public administrator, Feinberg held no interviews, instead selecting his friend and neighbor Louis Rosenthal, whose closest experience in the surrogate business was his father's service as public administrator in the early 1960s. Rosenthal promptly began to collect an 8 percent fee for every estate that crossed his desk, 2 percent more than counsels in other boroughs. He did so without filing the required affidavits describing what he'd done to earn the money. This was not a problem for Feinberg, however, who rubber-stamped more than $8 million in payments to his friend.

Such pillaging probably would have rolled merrily along had not two Daily News reporters, Nancie Katz and Larry Cohler-Esses, exposed the scheme in May 2002. In the wake of their stories, the Attorney General's Office and the Commission on Judicial Conduct each opened investigations. Rosenthal was forced out. In late June, the state Court of Appeals upheld the judicial conduct panel's ruling that Feinberg should also be removed. The judge had admitted to the commission that he had only "skimmed" the rules of office, and somehow missed the one about required affidavits. The panel found him "incredible, evasive, and unreliable."

Norman's replacement candidate for the office is a protéégéé, Supreme Court Justice Diana Johnson, who attends Clarence Norman Sr.'s First Baptist Church in Crown Heights. He has a backup candidate, Judge Lawrence Knipel, who has gotten good marks on the bench but whose independence has been questioned since his wife is a district leader and Norman loyalist.

The third candidate is civil court judge Margarita Lóópez Torres, who has been tilting her lance at Norman's machine ever since he refused to back her for re-election in 2002. The reason? Lóópez Torres refused to accept a political appointee as her law clerk ("The Judge Who Said No," July 31––August 6, 2002).

In the surrogate's race, Lóópez Torres has pledged to do all the things Feinberg claimed he would nine years ago, and more. "I am going to structure the court in a way it serves the people," she said under a hot noon sun at a City Hall press conference last month. "The integrity of this court has been challenged," she said. "I will change that."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0532,robbins1,66692,5.html

                        NY Judge Censured, Leaving Bench

By Tom Perrotta
New York Law Journal
New York Lawyer
July 27, 2005

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Richard D. Huttner has agreed to leave the bench at the end of the year after being censured for a second time in less than four years, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct announced yesterday.

The commission indicated that it would have preferred to remove the judge from the bench, but said it was "constrained" by the fact that it could not have completed a disciplinary proceeding without his cooperation before the end of the judge's current term in December. In agreeing not to seek recertification, the commission said, Justice Huttner, 70, had "acknowledged his misconduct."

"The judge's departure from office was an essential element of this stipulated censure," Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission's administrator and counsel, said in an interview.

The commission faulted Justice Huttner, who has been sitting in Queens since 2002, for presiding over a case in which a long-time friend, prominent Brooklyn attorney Ravi Batra, represented a party.

Justice Huttner did not inform the opposition of his relationship with Mr. Batra, with whom he has frequently dined and socialized since the mid-1990s. They have visited each other's homes and Justice Huttner also attended Mr. Batra's wedding anniversary party, according to the commission.

Between 1996 and 1999, Justice Huttner appointed Mr. Batra as a fiduciary in 11 cases. In one 1998 case, he appointed Mr. Batra receiver and counsel to Cypress Hills Cemetery. He continued to socialize with Mr. Batra while the case was before him.

The conduct commission singled out another case for its strongest criticism: Baisden v. Pacific House Residence for Adults Housing Development Fund Corporation .

Mr. Batra represented two of three defendants in the case, which involved an adult home whose president was Clarence Norman Sr., the father of the Brooklyn Democratic leader Clarence Norman, who was once a member of Mr. Batra's law firm. Justice Huttner did not disclose his relationship with Mr. Batra to attorneys, nor did he reveal that he had awarded Mr. Batra fiduciary appointments. His failure to do so violated the standards of judicial conduct, the commission found in a unanimous ruling.

"At the very least, [Justice Huttner] should have disclosed the relationship so that the parties and their attorneys could have had an opportunity to consider whether to seek his disqualification," the commission wrote.

The commission said a mitigating factor was that Justice Huttner ultimately played a "relatively small" role in the conclusion of the Baisden suit. The parties presented him with an agreed-upon stipulation and he signed it "so ordered."

In 2001, Justice Huttner was censured for using the prestige of his office to advance private interests when he actively participated in litigation involving the board of his cooperative. Though the cases involving Mr. Batra predated the previous sanction, the conduct commission said that the timing should not mitigate the current penalty.

"The record establishes that respondent lacks sensitivity to the special ethical obligations of judges and indicates the need for a severe sanction," the commission wrote.

Mr. Batra was recently at the center of another judicial sanction. In April, Manhattan Acting Supreme Court Justice Diane A. Lebedeff was censured for presiding over a personal injury suit in which Mr. Batra was a plaintiff.

The two have a personal relationship, and Justice Lebedeff at times excused opposing counsel so she could engage in "gossip" unrelated to the case, according to the commission's ruling. She also appointed Mr. Batra to a guardianship that paid him $84,000 while his personal injury suit was pending. The suit was eventually settled for $225,000. Justice Lebedeff was reassigned to Civil Court shortly after her sanction, the second censure of her career.

In a statement after the release of the Huttner decision, Mr. Batra said the ruling had created a "new and higher standard" for judges that should be applauded by the bench and the bar. In an interview, he added that since the Lebedeff ruling, he has been telling clients and opposing counsel if he has any relationship at all with a member of the bench.

"The lawyers don't have a problem, because they all have the same thing," Mr. Batra said. "No member of the bar or bench who values their lifelong reputation will sully their reputation for a case or a client, and that serves to enhance public confidence."

Mr. Batra said Justice Huttner is ailing from a heart condition that recently required surgery. The judge could not be reached for comment. His attorney, Jerome Karp, was unavailable.

http://www.nylawyer.com/display.php/file=/news/05/07/072705b

Panel Raps Judge for Keeping Mum on Att'y Pal

By Nancie L. Katz
Daily News Staff Writer
July 27, 2005

For the second time in four years, the state's judicial watchdog censured a Brooklyn judge - this time demanding that he retire because he presided over a case involving a close friend without letting the other side know.

Supreme Court Justice Richard Huttner is the second jurist to get in trouble with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct for having a personal relationship with politically connected lawyer Ravi Batra - and not telling the opposing attorneys about it.

Huttner has had a "close social relationship with" Batra since the mid-1990s, the commission said, and awarded the lawyer 11 lucrative appointments between 1996-1999.

"They have been to each other's homes, and [he] has attended various of Mr. Batra's family events," the commission wrote. "They have had ... drinks, lunch and dinner on numerous occasions."

Nonetheless, since June 2000, while presiding over a case involving Batra, Huttner did not tell the attorney general's office any of that.

"Even if they did not discuss the merits of Mr. Batra's case during their out-of-court meetings, an appearance of impropriety would be inevitable," the commission said.

But the commission did not charge that Huttner favored Batra in the case, which was settled.

The commission demanded the 70-year-old jurist step down at the end of the year, citing its 2001 censure against him for using his judicial position to improperly sway a judge to rule in his co-op's favor in a dispute with a restaurant. Huttner otherwise could have sought state approval to stay on until the age of 76.

"The retirement was an essential element of the commission's agreeing" not to pursue disciplinary charges against him, said its administrator, Robert Tembeckjian.

Huttner and his attorney did not return calls.

Batra declined to address the specifics of the commission's ruling.

"Every lawyer and former judge who is now a lawyer is now required to put on the record any relationship that exists with any party or lawyer or the court on the record," said Batra. "This will serve to ... to enhance public confidence."

                     A Brooklyn Judge, Censured, Is Retiring

The New York Times
July 26, 2005

ALBANY - A Brooklyn judge has been censured as part of an agreement that calls for him to retire by end of the year for failing disclose his close relationship to a politically connected lawyer who appeared before him, officials said Tuesday.

The judge, Justice Richard D. Huttner of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, was censured by the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct for presiding over a case five years ago without telling any of the parties involved that he had what the commission called "a close social relationship" with one of the lawyers involved, Ravi Batra.

Mr. Batra, the lawyer, was a close associate of Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., the head of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

Mr. Batra hired Mr. Norman to work at his Manhattan law firm, and Mr. Norman put Mr. Batra on a panel that helped choose judges in Brooklyn.

In the case that led to Justice Huttner's censure, Mr. Batra represented Mr. Norman's father, who was closing his home for the mentally ill.

2nd Judge Censured for Link to Same Attorney

Newsday
by Anthony M. Destefano
July 27, 2005

Judges who are friends with attorney Ravi Batra should best tread carefully.

For the second time this year, a State Supreme Court justice has been censured after a close personal friendship with the politically connected attorney created the appearance of impropriety.

A state judicial watchdog body yesterday recommended that State Supreme Court Justice Richard D. Huttner of Queens be censured because he presided over a lawsuit in which Batra, who is a close friend of the jurist, represented one of the parties.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct said Huttner, 70, agreed to accept the public censure and retire at the end of the year. As part of the agreed-upon disposition of the case, Huttner will not apply for certification to remain as a judge for another two-year term beyond the age of 70 as would have been his right, the commission said.

According to a two-page ruling released yesterday, Huttner continued to socialize with Batra while the attorney appeared before him in litigation.

"Even if they did not discuss the merits of Mr. Batra's case during their out-of-court meetings, an appearance of impropriety would be inevitable," the commission stated, adding that Huttner never disclosed his social relationship with the attorney to other lawyers in the case.

The commission noted that Huttner was censured in 2001 for "lending the prestige of judicial office to advance private interests" in a lawsuit involving his co-op board.

The co-op issue showed that Huttner "lacks sensitivity to the special ethical obligations of judges and indicates the need for a severe sanction," the commission said.

In yesterday's ruling, the commission noted that Batra had received a number of court appointments from 1996 to 1999.

In April, State Supreme Court Justice Diane A. Lebedeff of Manhattan was found by the commission to have shown a "glaring insensitivity" to her obligation to avoid the appearance of impropriety by presiding over a lawsuit brought by her friend Batra.

In a telephone interview with Newsday, Batra said that one of his adversaries in the litigation, the New York State attorney general's office, was already on notice that Huttner had given him a court appointment in a different case. He said the lawsuit in the latest Huttner matter was settled without the need for a decision by the judge.

A secretary in Huttner's office in Long Island City said the judge was on vacation. Jerome Karp, who represented Huttner before the commission, couldn't be reached for comment.

Judge Removes Himself From All Criminal Cases

Miami Herald
July 13, 2005

Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King has removed himself from all criminal cases because his secretary's husband has been charged in a marijuana-growing investigation.

King is not a subject of the probe. He has stopped presiding over criminal cases until the investigation is completed by federal authorities.

He declined to comment Tuesday on his temporary removal from the criminal docket, which was first reported by The Daily Business Review.

His secretary, Sandra Diaz, came under the scrutiny of federal prosecutors after they discovered that she passed along copies of public records downloaded from a court website to her husband, Jorge Diaz, before his arrest on marijuana conspiracy charges this spring. The online site, known as PACER, requires a subscription.

Those court-record printouts dealt with the earlier arrests of two of her husband's alleged associates.

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether the judge's secretary was involved in her husband's alleged criminal activities, which included a ''grow house'' in Loxahatchee. She has not been charged.

Federal Judge Skips Criminal
Cases as Cops Target His Secretary

By Dan Christensen
Miami Daily Business Review
July 11, 2005

For the second time in two months, Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in Miami has removed himself from all his criminal cases as federal and state agents have targeted his longtime secretary and her husband in a drug and money laundering probe.

Federal prosecutors in West Palm Beach believe that King's secretary, Sandra Diaz, passed copies of court documents to her husband, Jorge Diaz, shortly before his April 29 arrest in Key Largo on federal marijuana conspiracy charges.

In court filings, prosecutors described the items she passed to her husband as computer printouts of all court documents regarding the arrests of two of Jorge Diaz's alleged associates at his marijuana "grow house" in Loxahatchee, Fla. The printouts allegedly were downloaded from the online PACER system, which is publicly accessible to subscribers.

In an interview June 8, Judge King said his initial recusal on May 16 had nothing to do with rumored legal difficulties of a member of his staff. King acknowledged that a relative of that staffer had been indicted on federal charges but he would not disclose the circumstances or further identify the individuals.

There is no indication that the government suspects King of any wrongdoing. Neither King -- who's 77 and formerly served as chief judge of the Southern District of Florida -- nor current Chief Judge William J. Zloch returned calls for comment last week. Miami solo practitioner Mario S. Cano represents Sandra Diaz. He said Diaz would not comment on the matter.

Observers say King's decision to abandon his entire criminal docket twice in such a short period of time is extraordinary. "I'm unfamiliar with any equivalent situation ever occurring," said Federal Public Defender Kathleen Williams, who remains puzzled by King's actions.

Meanwhile, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta last week declined to prohibit the type of direct case transfers between judges that occurred after King removed himself from his criminal cases the first time in May. The transfers from King to U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore were done according to an unpublished and previously undisclosed Local Policy Manual. But the transfers contravened published Local Rules.

The 11th Circuit, without comment, denied a petition for a writ of mandamus by Miami attorneys Howard and Scott Srebnick that sought to prohibit judges in the Southern District from using the unpublished court rule to reassign cases to each other.

Many South Florida lawyers were surprised and upset when the Daily Business Review first reported on the unpublished manual last month, and they demanded that the Southern District of Florida publicly disclose the manual. The court has refused to do so.

The unpublished rule contravenes published Local Rules, which provides for the blind and random assignment of cases by the federal court clerk. Under the published Local Rules, recusing judges may not influence the selection of their successors.

Howard Srebnick is defending former Hamilton Bank chief Eduardo Masferrer in his fraud and conspiracy case. King transferred Masferrer's case directly to Moore on May 16 when King initially recused himself from all 21 of his criminal cases. That spurred Srebnick to ask Moore to send all those cases to the clerk for random reassignment.

In seeking to justify the direct transfer, Moore, in a written order, cited a rule in the Local Policy Manual that he said gave judges the authority to "confer and directly transfer all or any part of a case on the judge's docket to any consenting judge."

Moore did not rule and sent the matter to Chief Judge Zloch for a final decision. On June 9, Zloch ruled that King's original recusal was actually not a recusal. Zloch wrote that "it is clear that said order was intended to be an order of transfer" under the Local Policy Manual. He did not explain how that was made clear to him.

The Srebnick brothers appealed. Among other things, they attacked what they called the district court's "disregard of the published Local Rules in favor an unpublished policy manual.

In an interview, Howard Srebnick said he was disappointed in the 11th Circuit's decision, contending that public knowledge of the investigation of King's secretary might have made a difference in the outcome. "Perhaps the appellate court would have ruled differently had these circumstances been disclosed," said Srebnick, a partner at Black Srebnick & Kornspan of Miami.

Three weeks after transferring his cases to Moore, King decided to start taking criminal case assignments again.

But on June 16, King reversed course again when he asked Chief Judge Zloch to reassign all his criminal cases. King's "oral request" prompted Zloch to write an administrative order that parceled out King's new criminal docket at random. At least eight of King's cases were assigned to six different judges.

Pot Supply Store

After King first dropped his criminal docket in May, courthouse sources identified his secretary, Sandra Diaz, as the member of King's staff whose husband was under investigation. Sources described her as a "wonderful person" who has worked as King's secretary for about a decade.

On May 13, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted her 38-year-old husband, Jorge, twice on drug charges. In the first case, Diaz was charged with conspiring with an acquaintance, Tommy Rodriguez, to possess and distribute marijuana grown at the Loxahatchee house and at a residence in Royal Palm Beach. In the second case, the indictment says Diaz conspired with his cousin, Pedro Correa, 31, "to manufacture with intent to distribute" marijuana at the home in Royal Palm Beach.

Diaz faces up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine if convicted. His attorney, Stuart Adelstein of Adelstein & Matters in Miami, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

A spokeswoman for interim U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta also declined to comment.

But court records say the investigation began when state agents with a money laundering task force placed under surveillance Gold Coast Hydroponics, a Fort Lauderdale store "known to supply growers of hydroponic plants, including marijuana."

A truck registered to Jorge Diaz was spotted parked there. Agents used Florida Power & Light records to identify the house in Loxahatchee that Diaz owned, and conducted "trash pulls" that yielded small amounts of marijuana on clothing and dryer lint.

Agents armed with a search warrant raided the home on 78th Place North on April 12. Rodriguez and his girlfriend, Kyrenia Blanco, were arrested and quickly cooperated. Rodriguez implicated Diaz, and gave agents enough to search a second grow house, where more than 100 marijuana plants were seized.

After further investigation, Diaz and Correa were arrested April 29. Diaz was located by agents who tailed his wife, Sandra. He was nabbed at his in-laws' mobile home in Key Largo.

Money Laundering Probe

Court records say agents found in Diaz's possession "PACER printouts of all the documents relating to the arrests of Rodriguez and Blanco, documents that were believed to have been obtained by his wife, Sandra Diaz." Also found was a carbon copy of a $25,000 cashier's check from the couple's joint account, made payable to an attorney who represented Rodriguez and Blanco.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Linnea R. Johnson in West Palm Beach ordered Jorge Diaz jailed as a flight risk and a danger to the community. He appealed the order to Judge Zloch.

In a June 1 response to the appeal, Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Marie Villafana in West Palm Beach disclosed that Sandra Diaz also was under investigation.

"Diaz's wife has recently been served with a 'target letter,' informing her that she is the target of a grand jury investigation involving charges of money laundering, making false statements to law enforcement and narcotics manufacturing and distributing," Villafana said.

Zloch dismissed Diaz's attempt to get out of jail. Five days later, Zloch recused himself from Diaz's case without explanation. The clerk reassigned the case to U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra in Fort Lauderdale.

http://www.nylawyer.com/display.php/file=/news/05/07/071105d

State Panel Censures Judge for the 2nd Time in 2 Years

By Andy Newman
New York Times
April 8, 2005

A Manhattan judge has been censured for the second time in two years by state judicial authorities, who said yesterday that she should not have presided over a lawsuit that had been filed by one of her friends.

The judge, Diane A. Lebedeff, also gave court appointments worth more than $84,000 to the friend, a lawyer, while presiding over the lawyer's suit against a company that he claimed had sold him a defective chair. Justice Lebedeff's friendship with the lawyer, Ravi Batra, included private lunches and about five instances in which she excused opposing lawyers from the courtroom so that, in her words, she could "gossip" with him, according to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Justice Lebedeff, a Civil Court judge who has served as an acting State Supreme Court justice since 1988, made several rulings in Mr. Batra's favor in the chair case. One of the rulings was overturned by an appellate panel that said she had not been objective.

The judicial conduct commission, which handed down the censure, wrote that Justice Lebedeff's "apparent failure to realize that her relationship with Mr. Batra would raise the question whether her rulings were based solely on the merits is shocking and suggests an unacceptable insensitivity to judicial ethics."

Short of removal from the bench, censure is the strongest discipline meted out by the 11-member commission. Justice Lebedeff was censured in November 2003 for giving her personal accountant court-appointed jobs worth $21,000 during a period when the accountant did private work for her for free.

The commission warned the judge that in view of her disciplinary history "any future ethical transgressions may be met with a more severe sanction."

Justice Lebedeff and Mr. Batra became friends in the late 1980's, visiting each other's homes and going on at least one joint family outing, the commission wrote. In 1994, Mr. Batra sued a Brooklyn furniture store and several other parties, claiming that he fell from a chair the store had sold him and sustained herniated disks, loss of height, worn-down teeth, heart damage, frustration and anger, among other things. He sought $80 million.

The case, which dragged on for more than six years, was randomly assigned to Justice Lebedeff. She continued to have lunch with Mr. Batra during the case and to engage in "gossip" sessions with him in her robing room or chambers. The defense lawyers did not object at the time to the judge's private conversations with Mr. Batra. In 1999, at Mr. Batra's request, she disqualified one of the defendants in the case for missing a deadline. The sanction was overturned on appeal.

In a separate case in 1999, Justice Lebedeff appointed Mr. Batra to evaluate whether a wealthy 94-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease needed a financial guardian. She approved his bills for $400 an hour, nearly double the usual rate, state investigators found. Mr. Batra was eventually paid $84,753 from the woman's assets.

The conduct commission noted that the court appointment signaled Justice Lebedeff's confidence in Mr. Batra's credibility and integrity. Therefore, the panel wrote, awarding it while Mr. Batra "was a litigant whose credibility she would have to evaluate in a personal injury case in which he was seeking monetary damages created a direct conflict."

Mr. Batra eventually settled the chair suit for $225,000 after it was transferred to another judge.

Justice Lebedeff referred all questions about the censure yesterday to her lawyer, Ben B. Rubinowitz, who said, "Diane Lebedeff recognizes that she created an appearance of impropriety, she agreed to the censure, and she wants to go back to being what she does best, which is being a good judge, which she has been for two decades."

Mr. Batra said that he had gained the settlement in the suit on its merits and that his friendship with the judge had been known to the defendants, who never made an issue of it.

Judge Took Pal's Case

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
April 8, 2005

A Manhattan judge presided over an $80 million personal-injury lawsuit in which the plaintiff was her close friend a fact she never mentioned to the defendant in the six years she had the case.

The judge also never told the defense she'd given her pal a politically connected lawyer lucrative financial appointments while the case was ongoing. unacceptable insensitivity to judicial ethics."

Also, she had been censured before.

The commission said Lebedeff had been friends with the plaintiff, lawyer Ravi Batra, since the late '80s.

Lebedeff never mentioned that when Batra's suit against Office Furniture Service Inc. landed before her, the agency said. Batra represented himself in the case, seeking millions for injuries he suffered when a chair in his office broke.

While the case was in progress, Lebedeff also gave Batra court appointments, including one that netted him $84,000, the commission said.

They also kept socializing, according to the report.

In one ruling, Lebedeff found that Batra's opponents had defaulted because they filed their papers one day past a 45-day deadline. That decision was overturned by an appeals court, and the case was sent to another judge. Batra eventually settled it for $250,000.

Batra insisted the defense lawyers knew he and Lebedeff were friends.

NY Judge Censured for Seeking
 Favorable Treatment for Friends

By Daniel Wise
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
April 6, 2005

By a 10-1 vote, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct has censured a Westchester Family Court judge for trying to help friends win favorable treatment in two cases.

The misconduct of Judge Nilda Morales Horowitz was compounded when she gave inaccurate information to the commission's investigative staff while being questioned under oath, according to the commission's determination released yesterday.

Judge Horowitz had acknowledged misconduct based upon a stipulated set of facts so the sole issue before the commission was whether she should be removed from the bench as its legal staff had recommended.

The majority acknowledged that the severity of the appropriate sanction was a close question based upon prior precedents. It nonetheless opted for the lesser sanction of censure because Judge Horowitz was acting out of "sympathy for friends and a strong belief in them as parents" rather than for personal gain.

In dissent, the commission's chairman, Lawrence S. Goldman, voted for removal because Judge Horowitz had aggravated serious misconduct by being "evasive" and possibly "deliberately false" in answering questions during the investigation.

Judge Horowitz "is looking forward to putting this unfortunate incident behind her so she may continue in her service to the people of New York," said her lawyer, Deborah A. Scalise of Jones Sledzik Garneau & Nardone in Scarsdale.

There was powerful recorded evidence in the first of the two cases in which Judge Horowitz was charged with attempting to help a friend, who was once her child's teacher. In that case, she had left a recorded telephone message in which she had enlisted another judge's court attorney to help the friend gain the relief she wanted.

The friend had been embroiled in litigation with her husband before another Westchester Family Court judge. Shortly after the friend told Judge Horowitz that she was planning to file a new proceeding, Judge Horowitz called the other judge's court attorney —— who had previously been Judge Horowitz's court attorney —— and told her that the friend did not have "a good rapport" with the other judge. Judge Horowitz was recorded asking the court attorney for her "suggestions" as to how to get the judge to recuse himself.

In the other case, Judge Horowitz's requests for her friends —— both before and after they had filed a custody case —— were more elliptical, though at times suggestive.

According to the stipulation, Judge Horowitz on six occasions had ex parte conversations about the friends' matter with the supervising judge of the Westchester Family Court who handled the initial application for emergency relief, with the judge to whom the case was assigned, and with that judge's court clerk and court attorney.

In most of the contacts, Judge Horowitz stated that the couple, who were trying to win custody of a then 10-year-old child, were her "friends." In two of the conversations, though, she went further, and asked the court clerk to "look after the couple," whom she described as "really nice people." She also told the judge's court attorney that her friends were "good parents."

The judge assigned to the matter recused herself after being contacted ex parte by Judge Horowitz. The supervising judge of the Westchester Family Court, Joan O. Cooney, informed Judge Horowitz that the case had been transferred out of Westchester County because of her intervention, according to the commission's findings.

The majority noted that judges who intervene in cases through an ex parte contact violate the rules of judicial conduct even if they do not make a request for special consideration. Such conduct, the commission noted, "has long been condemned as favoritism."

In deciding that censure was the appropriate sanction, the majority noted that in Matter of Kiley, 74 NY2d 364 (1989), the Court of Appeals overruled the commission's removal determination and censured a Suffolk County District Court judge who had relayed favorable background information relevant to the sentencing of two defendants, once to a prosecutor and once to a prosecutor and a judge.

The majority acknowledged that Judge Horowitz, who had ignored warnings by her supervising judge that the case should proceed "in the normal course," had engaged in conduct more serious than that involved in Kiley.

Nonetheless, the majority found censure the proper sanction because Judge Horowitz had been motivated by friendship, not personal gain.

Mr. Goldman, in dissent, found that a lack of candor in Judge Horowitz's testimony, coupled with her initiatives for her friends, warranted removal.

In questioning Judge Horowitz about her efforts to recuse the judge in her friend's case, commission staff asked whether there had been any other instances in which Judge Horowitz had communications with judges or court staff about individuals who were litigants before them or about to become litigants.

At the time, the commission had not yet received a complaint concerning Judge Horowitz's efforts concerning the couple's custody matter.

In response to several queries, Judge Horowitz said she had had no such conversations other than to note that she had seen people in court.

Mr. Goldman wrote that he found Judge Horowitz's claim that she had forgotten about her discussions about the couple "unconvincing."

Her testimony about the couple came "only four to six months after she had made six requests for favorable treatment and only three months after she was rebuked by her administrative judge for causing the assigned judge to recuse herself. . . . These events are certainly memorable," he wrote.

Judge Horowitz, who was sitting in White Plains when the actions leading to the investigation occurred, now sits in New Rochelle.

In 2000, she became the first Hispanic to win election to a countywide seat in the Ninth Judicial District, which covers five counties including Westchester.

Cozying Up to Judges and Reaping Opportunity The Lawyers Who Are Friends of the Court Whom You Know In The Courthouse and Not What You Know By Kevin Flynn and Andy Newman New York Times November 11, 2003 Ravi Batra practices the kind of law that does not come with steno pools or 40th-floor conference rooms with views of Central Park. His office is in a brick building in a section of Manhattan known as Little India. His legal pedigree is respectable but unremarkable. His clients tend to be small companies or people who have been hurt in accidents. Yet for much of the past decade Mr. Batra has been a particularly potent force in the clubby corridors of New York City courthouses. He played a role in picking State Supreme judges. Ruby Washington/The New York Times   Lawyers seeking an edge in the unfamiliar world of At State Supreme Court in Brooklyn,       Brooklyn courts hired him as their guide. Ravi Batra is a lawyer who keeps in         Judges who controlled court appointments- close contact with justices throughout      where lawyers typically manage the assets the building.                                            and welfare of the elderly, the young or of troubled companies- gave him 150 of these, worth more than $500,000 in fees. Mr. Batra's success was fashioned in part from long hours and legal dexterity. But by many accounts it was built on his keen appreciation for an unspoken truth: that whom you know in courthouse circles can be just as valuable as what you know. And Mr. Batra developed a particular knack for getting to know judges and the politicians who made them. He invited them to dinner and his home. He toasted them at parties. He made the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss a member of his law firm. And the boss, Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., put him on the panel that screened Democratic nominees for Supreme Court judgeships, a powerful position since the nomination is tantamount to election in heavily Democratic Brooklyn. "He's very well known," said Justice Reinaldo E. Rivera of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, when asked how Mr. Batra came to offer welcoming remarks at his swearing-in ceremony last year.               Ravi Batra has friendly ties with "Everybody knows Mr. Batra."                                      political leaders like Assembly-                                                                                                                  man Clarence Norman Jr., above                                                                                                                  who put Mr. Batra on a screening Indeed, a review of Mr. Batra's cases and interviews     panel for new judges. with judges and lawyers who know him provide a glimpse into a seldom seen corner of the court system where cozy relationships can play defining roles in who becomes a judge and who benefits from the decisions that judges make. In Mr. Batra's case, he took the tried and true tools of networking - schmoozing, flattery, mutual back-scratching -and practiced them to an extent that tended to blur, or even ignore, the boundaries between the bench and the bar. Judges who were his friends, or who visited his house or who joined him for dinner, gave him appointments or presided over cases in which he had a stake, according to court records. Twice he was awarded fees that state monitors later found unusually high. In one instance, defendants who paid Mr. Batra $225,000 to settle his own civil suit said they never realized he knew the judge in the case as well as he did.. When Collegiality Tests Integrity Of course, in some New York political and legal circles, the suggestion that a simple meal between legal professionals could undermine a judge's integrity seems naïïve. Certainly, Mr. Batra thinks so. "The collegial meeting of lawyers on both sides of the aisle with the bench is an absolute plus to the functioning of the profession," Mr. Batra said in an interview. The judges in Mr. Batra's cases said in interviews that their decisions were made on the merits, and that Mr. Batra received no favors. For his part, Mr. Batra likened his behavior to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used to play cards with Supreme Court justices, he said, only to have them overturn his legislation several days later. "If you're a person of integrity, the question ends there," he said. "And if you're not a person of integrity, all the appearances in the world don't give you integrity. So I prefer substantive integrity than apparent integrity." But experts say faith in the courts is built on such appearances. Several years ago, after the fallout from one of Mr. Batra's appointments, state officials decided to explore whether such appointments were controlled by politics. Their 2001 report found the system awash in cronyism. "Many of the recipients of multiple and lucrative appointments in guardianship cases had connections to judges, political parties or court-system personnel," it said, "raising concerns that they were selected based on factors other than merit." Mr. Batra's name has surfaced again this year as District Attorney Charles J. Hynes of Brooklyn investigates the culture of the borough's courthouse. Prosecutors have subpoenaed Mr. Batra's business records. They have sent a cooperating witness into a meeting with him, wearing a concealed recording device, to discuss whether money can influence the judicial selection process. Nothing incriminating came from the tape, and Mr. Batra, 48, said he did not believe the conversation touched on such matters. His lawyer, Randy M. Mastro, said he has been told that Mr. Batra, who has met voluntarily with prosecutors, is not a target of the investigation. The uproar, however, has taken a toll. Mr. Batra resigned from the screening panel. Mr. Norman, who was indicted several weeks ago on unrelated larceny charges, left Mr. Batra's law firm. And in a severe indignity to a man who thrives on access, the chief judge in Brooklyn, Ann T. Pfau, told other judges that she will not take calls from Mr. Batra. Such scrutiny of how Brooklyn picks its judges would most likely not have arisen if the candidates approved by the screening panel had been uniformly good. But in the past two years, four Brooklyn judges serving in the Supreme Court, the state's highest trial court, have gotten into trouble, including two who were charged with taking bribes. Mr. Batra did not come by his political connections easily, as either the son of a judge or the protéégéé of a political leader. He was born in India and grew up in Queens. He graduated from Pace University and Fordham Law School, taught at Pace for a number of years and practiced law, often with a certain flair. Court submissions might be sprinkled with florid language or exclamation points. His stationery was emblazoned with his initials set against the background of a golden eagle. His job at Pace ended in 1986 when the university did not renew his contract. He filed a discrimination suit but lost, at trial and on appeal. The appellate judge described his filings as "raving and often incomprehensible." But over time, Mr. Batra, a man with the practiced grace of a professional diplomat, built his contacts. He served on scholarly panels, joined the Jewish Lawyers Guild and the Puerto Rican Bar Association, among other groups, and relied on a personality that people describe as charming or, well, forward. In particular, he showered attention on judges. He praised them in letters to newspapers. He invited them to his Christmas parties. As an official of several bar associations, he ran affairs where judges were given Judicial Sunshine Awards his own creation. The court in his lexicon was "the Cathedral of Justice" and judges were "jewels in the crown." "Each judge that appoints you places his robes in your hands for safekeeping," Mr. Batra said. For lawyers and judges, the sharing of cocktails and canapéés at bar association dinners has long been a fact of courthouse life. But Mr. Batra, according to several judges, pressed for a rare level of familiarity. He roamed the Supreme Court like it was his country club, they said, at times visiting judges unannounced in their chambers, or parking his car, with permission, in the courthouse's reserved lot. Some judges felt uncomfortable. Justice Michael L. Pesce recalled the first time he met Mr. Batra. The lawyer greeted him, he said, by kissing him on both cheeks. One justice, Milton Mollen, who has since retired, said Mr. Batra invited him to dinner at his home 10 years ago. Several days later, Mr. Mollen began receiving calls from other judges, he said, telling him that they would be at the "birthday party" Mr. Batra was giving for him. Mr. Mollen said he thought he was being used and told people not to go. But he drove to Mr. Batra's home in New Rochelle. "I told him off and left," he said. Mr. Batra denied Mr. Mollen's account and said the judge had helped to plan the event. An Appointment to Screen Judges In 1995, Mr. Batra reinforced his most important political relationship by adding Mr. Norman to his two-person law firm. Mr. Norman's chief function, Mr. Batra said, was handling "introductions" that might result in new business. Last year, Mr. Norman made $52,000 from the firm. This year, as part of his salary, the monthly payments on his $80,000 Mercedes Benz were paid by Mr. Batra. After he joined the firm, Mr. Norman appointed his boss to the Democratic screening panel for judges. Mr. Norman says he picked Mr. Batra because he is a good lawyer, an opinion that other allies of Mr. Batra share. "He has a very fertile legal mind and thinks, as we say, outside the box," said Martin W. Edelman, president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association. Nonetheless, Mr. Batra came to be viewed largely as Mr. Norman's surrogate on a panel that critics contend rubber-stamped the party's favored candidates, using criteria that had more to do with campaign contributions than legal acumen. "There was a total lack of transparency to the process that allowed the public to lose confidence that competence, credentials and integrity were being evaluated in an independent way," said City Councilman Lewis A. Fidler of Brooklyn. Mr. Batra's popularity as a court appointee picked up drastically after he became affiliated with Mr. Norman in 1995, although more than half the assignments came from Manhattan judges. Yet some of the judges who selected him were hardly strangers. Some had dined with him or been honored at parties he organized. Good judges, Mr. Batra said, "make an appointment to a person they know and trust and know the job can be done rather than look one up through the Yellow Pages." A few times, Mr. Batra said, he made calls on judges' behalf when they sought promotions, but only because they were worthy. In 1998, for example, Mr. Batra said he tried to help an acting Supreme Court judge, Harold Tompkins, win a permanent spot by calling the Manhattan Democratic leader, Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr. In the preceding 18 months, Justice Tompkins had given Mr. Batra 10 appointments worth more than $85,000. Mr. Farrell denied that such a call took place. Justice Tompkins, now retired, said he did not know of any such call. Among Mr. Batra's closest friends on the bench, according to interviews, has been Justice Richard D. Huttner in Brooklyn, who has given him 11 appointments. In 1999, Justice Huttner was one of the judges honored at a $250-a-head dinner that Mr. Batra organized at the Harmonie Club in Manhattan. A year earlier, the judge had appointed Mr. Batra to oversee the troubled Cypress Hills Cemetery on the Queens-Brooklyn border as its receiver. In that capacity, Mr. Batra set off a storm in 1999 when, citing their fees, he fired the cemetery's existing lawyers, two politically connected men like himself, and appointed his own firm in their place. The lawyers wrote to Democratic leaders complaining that their years of loyalty had been disregarded. Their letter's acknowledgment that appointments typically went to the politically connected had immediate impact. State investigators began looking into courthouse patronage. The state attorney general's office asked that Mr. Batra be removed as the cemetery's receiver. Justice Huttner resisted for weeks before removing Mr. Batra as receiver, but retaining him as the receiver's lawyer. He resisted again when the attorney general sought in May 2000 to have Mr. Batra completely removed from the case. The judge said Mr. Batra had done nothing wrong. But Mr. Batra on his own decided to step down. The next day, the lawyer and the judge met socially over drinks at a restaurant in the judge's Manhattan apartment building. The next month, they were back together in court. This time, Mr. Batra was representing Clarence Norman's father, who was closing his home for the mentally ill. Should Justice Huttner have disclosed their relationship in court, given their friendship? Mr. Batra said no. The judge did not return calls seeking comment. But it is the kind of question that has arisen in situations where relationships develop between lawyers and judges. Perceptions of Partiality The rules that govern judicial conduct are broad in scope. They instruct judges to make sure they do not allow their social and political relationships to create a perception of partiality. But just such a perception has arisen in a case where Mr. Batra was friendly with the judge. The case, in 1994, concerned a fall Mr. Batra said he had from a swivel chair in his office. He sued the Brooklyn company that sold him the chair. He said the fall had left him with herniated disks, loss of height, worn-down teeth, heart damage and frustration and anger that "leaks out in certain relationships," according to court papers. He sought $80 million —— for his suffering, but also for a patio bar and a game room with table-tennis and air-hockey tables "to permit activity without injury or waste of travel time," the papers said. The case was assigned to acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Diane A. Lebedeff, someone with whom Mr. Batra became friendly. While she was hearing the case, they occasionally shared a meal, according to interviews. More significant, she gave him several court appointments, including a 1999 case that state investigators found troubling. In that case, the judge asked Mr. Batra to evaluate whether a wealthy 94-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease needed a financial guardian. Mr. Batra charged $400 an hour for his work, nearly double the usual rate, state investigators found. And when he determined the woman did need a guardian, Justice Lebedeff gave him that post, too, with the family's consent. All told, he made $84,753 in fees paid from the woman's assets. The investigators noted that he charged $100 for each of 80 short phone calls and never listed their subject matter. Eight lawyers involved in the swivel-chair case say that Justice Lebedeff never told them about these appointments. Leonard Chipkin, a lawyer who represented the furniture store's insurer, said she should have. "In any personal injury case, credibility is an issue," he said. "If I make a motion challenging the credibility of the plaintiff and I've got a judge who trusts this man with a great deal of money, that's something that I would have wanted to know." In an interview, Justice Lebedeff defended her conduct as appropriate and impartial. She said she could not recall whether she had disclosed the appointments in court or whether she needed to. "If I had thought it was appropriate to do so, I would have done it," she said. Mr. Batra said the judge did not need to disclose the appointments because the lawyers knew about the relationship, having sat in a hearing about the woman's case in court one day. Mr. Batra ultimately won a settlement in the swivel-chair case after six years. Defense lawyers said his case was helped by several orders from Justice Lebedeff - one of which was overturned by appellate judges who said Justice Lebedeff had not objectively reviewed the history of the case. Mr. Batra said the defendants paid him $225,000. The facts, he said, were simply on his side. "The impartiality of the court process," Mr. Batra said, "substantively cannot be toyed with."                        Politics Rule Judgeships Upstate, Too By Leslie Eaton New York Times November 17, 2003 TICA, N.Y.  In most ways, this small upstate city seems a world away from Brooklyn. But walk into the Oneida County Courthouse, and things appear awfully familiar. The Supreme Court justices are all from one political party, and they got where they are largely through political pull. They raise thousands of dollars of campaign money from local lawyers and dole out court appointments to politically connected lawyers. It is, in fact, the same judicial selection system that in heavily Democratic Brooklyn has led to scandal, criminal investigations and, some critics say, increasing public cynicism about the quality of justice meted out by the state's highest trial court. Except that here, all the judges are Republicans. For those calling for an overhaul of how judges are selected or elected in New York State, the situation here illuminates an important truth: If the system is flawed, both parties have exploited its imperfections. And those imperfections can be found outside the five boroughs of New York City. Certainly, the dubious doings of the Democratic Party in choosing judges in Brooklyn have received the greatest share of scrutiny recently, and with reason. No judge up here has been indicted on bribery charges, nor is a grand jury here investigating whether judgeships are for sale by party leaders. But the overweening influence of politics and money on the bench are just as obvious here, where Supreme Court judgeships seem to be used as rewards for long service to the Republican Party. In Oneida County, the elected Supreme Court justices include the former law partner of a powerful state senator, the former majority leader of the county legislature and the former county chairman of the Republican Party. And so it goes across the rest of the vast Fifth Judicial District, which stretches from Syracuse in the south to Watertown in the north, west to Oswego County and east to Herkimer County. The Supreme Court bench is studded with onetime high-profile Republicans: people who were formerly district attorney, city councilman, town supervisor, city attorney, corporation counsel and county legislator. (There is one Democrat among the 17 elected justices in the district, and one woman among the men.) Indeed, the political influence on judicial selection here reminds even some insiders of the situation in New York City. "I practiced law in Brooklyn, and it's just like here - except that the majority party here is Republican," said John R. Tenney, who recently retired after 35 years on the Supreme Court in Utica and is a former Republican county chairman and onetime head of the statewide association of Supreme Court justices. As a result, the judge said in an interview, the quality of his colleagues is mixed: "I've seen some superior judges and some you wonder how they got on the bench." Technically, the judges in the Fifth Judicial District get on the bench the same way judges do all over the state, through districtwide elections. The district consists of six counties, with about 630,000 voters. Supreme Court elections have an unusual twist: the candidates are not chosen through primaries. Rather, they are selected by delegates to a nominating convention. And those delegates are picked by the county chairmen. That system troubles many critics of the judicial selection process, who believe the bench should include people with a variety of backgrounds. The current system "pretty much excludes from the judiciary anyone who's not involved in politics - they're out of the game altogether," said A. Thomas Levin, president of the New York State Bar Association. The Republican chairmen of the two largest counties in the district, Onondaga and Oneida, say that while they choose the convention delegates, they do not personally handpick the judicial candidates. And they dispute the widely held theory that judgeships - which at more than $136,000 annually for 14-year terms are very high-paying jobs here - are simply a reward for party service. In fact, the Oneida County Republican chairman, Mark Scheidelman, said that while in the past the desire for a judgeship attracted some people to become active in the party, he had actually been elected to his political post because he was not a lawyer and did not want to be a judge. "That was a selling point," he said. Republicans in the district argue that judicial candidates face real elections, unlike in heavily Democratic Brooklyn, where getting the nomination is tantamount to being elected. More than 30 percent of the voters in the Fifth District are registered Democrats (although the Democratic Party often fails to field candidates for Supreme Court slots). Still, in the last decade, only one Democratic Supreme Court candidate, Brian F. DeJoseph, has triumphed at the ballot box - and even he described it as a bit of a fluke. Justice DeJoseph, who was a longtime city judge in Syracuse, said he was helped in 2000 by his name recognition, Hillary Rodham Clinton's coattails and a split in the Republican Party over one of its candidates. "You've got to catch some breaks to win as a Democrat here," he said. Probably the most striking example of the interplay between politics and judicial selection was the election in 2000 of Robert F. Julian of Utica. In legal circles, Justice Julian was known as a successful plaintiffs' lawyer specializing in medical malpractice cases. In political circles, however, he was a powerful and controversial figure even within the Republican Party: a longtime majority leader of the Oneida County legislature and a formidable power broker. (Timothy J. Julian, his brother, is the mayor of Utica.) When he decided that he wanted to become a Supreme Court justice, he was endorsed not only by his own party, but also by the Conservative, Independence and Democratic Parties. "It was worth it to me to have him out of politics," said William C. Morris II, the Democratic chairman of Oneida County. For a prospective judge, though, Mr. Julian had an unusual résumé. He became a lawyer through the uncommon route of working in a law office for several years and passing the bar exam. Shortly before the election, local newspapers reported why Mr. Julian had not graduated from law school: he had been expelled in the early 1970's after admitting that he had cheated on the LSAT entrance exam by getting someone else to retake the test for him after doing poorly on it himself. He said publicly that he regretted his actions, and he was elected. Legal and political insiders had been aware of Mr. Julian's past. "It was disclosed and discussed," said Leighton R. Burns, who runs the committee of the Oneida County bar that vets judicial candidates. "He may have been led astray when he was young, but he's a quality guy." Once elected, justices are technically barred from participating in politics. But they have the power to dispense thousands of dollars of work to lawyers, and over the years, in the Fifth District, as in Brooklyn, that work has frequently been given to lawyers with party affiliations. The appointments can be to manage the assets of the elderly or impaired or to what are known as referee assignments, which usually pay $500 or $550 for handling property foreclosures. Much of the work is regarded as easy. "You get paid for showing up," said Richard D. Grossman, who practiced law in the district for many years before moving to Vermont. A sampling of appointments made in the district in recent years suggests that those who get picked often work at law firms that have political connections or that contribute thousands of dollars to Republican candidates, especially judicial candidates. And the lawyers themselves are almost always registered Republicans. The list of frequent appointees includes the former leader of the Oneida County Conservative Party, the wife of a county legislator and her law partner, the daughter of a retired judge, members of various Republican committees and the former law partner of a sitting justice. Also on the lists are law firms that contributed thousands of dollars to Republican judicial candidates. For example, members of the Cambareri, Cambareri & Koldin law firm in Syracuse received at least 24 appointments in the last five years, according to data from the State Office of Court Administration; since 1999, the firm and its three named partners have contributed more than $6,000 to Republican candidates for the Supreme Court, according to the State Board of Elections. Lawyers and their firms are the chief contributors to judicial candidates, and in this district they contribute a lot; candidates for the Supreme Court routinely raise or borrow $100,000 or more, much of which gets spent on television advertisements to increase their name recognition among voters. Judges insist that they do not know, much less care, who contributes to their campaigns, but surveys suggest that the public thinks otherwise. And that belief is damaging, said Ken Jockers, executive director of the Fund for Modern Courts. "Even if it's not the case, even if the judge is doing a great job," he said, "the litigant who is not a donor walks away with a question in his head about the level of justice he just received." Take the example of Michael E. Daley, a former Herkimer County district attorney, who raised about $60,000 when he successfully ran for the Supreme Court in 2001. His campaign's only loan, for just $3,500, came from George F. Aney, a lawyer in Herkimer, N.Y., who is considered something of a local kingmaker. "You don't get elected unless your sign is in his yard," one lawyer said. Mr. Aney forgave most of the loan, and contributed more than $3,000 outright, making him one of the campaign's biggest donors. And Mr. Aney often appears in court in front of Justice Daley. Among his clients was Raymond Graham, who was indicted in January on felony charges, including manslaughter, after his speeding car slammed into the back of a sport utility vehicle driven by Andrea Randazzo. Mr. Randazzo, the 60-year-old founder of a small chain of pizzerias, was killed the night before his youngest son's wedding. That son, Antonino A. Randazzo, said his family became irate in May when, after Mr. Graham agreed to plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide, Judge Daley said he was considering a sentence of just six months in the county jail, rather than several years in prison. Victims' families almost never like plea bargains. But in this case, Mr. Randazzo said the family learned of the ties between the judge's campaign and the defense lawyer, and could not believe that the outcome in the case was not tainted by that relationship. Both Mr. Aney and the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Graham deny that anything improper occurred, and although they disagree about whether the district attorney approved of the proposed six-month sentence, they agree that justice was done. So does the judge, who noted in an interview that he ultimately sentenced Mr. Graham to at least a year in state prison. Besides receiving a negative report from the probation department, Mr. Graham had been arrested again for speeding. Mr. Randazzo said that his family was relieved that Mr. Graham received a longer sentence, but he cannot lose the bad taste in his mouth. "That things like this really do happen in the court system," Mr. Randazzo said, "it's just too bad, too bad for families like us."  Judges Say Democratic Official Issued List of Favored Lawyers By Andy Newman New York Times December 16, 2003 Several judges in Brooklyn have told investigators that a Brooklyn Democratic Party official had given them a list of lawyers to consider when handing out court appointments, according to a law enforcement official and a lawyer involved in the case. The handwritten list included several lawyers with strong ties to the party, including the official himself, Steven D. Cohn, the party's executive secretary, as well as Mr. Cohn's law partner, the law enforcement official and lawyer said. One of the judges, Jules L. Spodek of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, said in an interview yesterday that he had appointed Ravi Batra, then the party chairman's law partner, in a real estate case because his name was on the list and because he had heard that Mr. Batra knew real estate. Justice Spodek said Mr. Cohn had listed some lawyers to be considered for referee jobs and others for possible receiverships, which are generally more lucrative appointments. The list, which he received in 1999, was accompanied by a note thanking him for his help, he said. The list surfaced as the Brooklyn district attorney's office continues its investigation into the influence of the Democratic Party on the judiciary in Brooklyn. The two top officials of the county party Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., the chairman, and Jeffrey C. Feldman, the executive director were indicted last month, accused of strong-arming judicial candidates into hiring the party's favored consultants to work on their campaigns. The district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, has denounced the current state system of choosing judicial nominees, in which a few party leaders have tremendous say over who becomes a judge. A law enforcement official and a lawyer involved in the case said that there was nothing illegal about party leaders giving judges a list of lawyers to consider appointing unless there was some quid pro quo involved, and that investigators had not turned up evidence of such an arrangement. Justice Spodek said he had not been directly pressured to appoint the lawyers on the list. Other judges told investigators that they had not felt pressured; they said they either had not hired from the list or had done so on the appointees' merits, not because they were afraid of retribution by the party. A spokesman for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, Bob Liff, said yesterday: "No such list has ever existed in any formal or informal sense. If there were situations where judges would ask for recommendations, party leaders or other lawyers might have offered them. But there was never any approved list that carries some official or unofficial imprimatur of the party." Mr. Batra's lawyer, Randy Mastro, said he knew of no allegations that there was a list of recommended appointees that included Mr. Batra. Among those on the list were Richard S. Goldberg, Mr. Cohn's law partner, and Aimee Richter, who also worked for Mr. Cohn's firm. Court appointments have long been a main source of patronage for the politically connected. Judges can appoint lawyers to be guardians of incapacitated people, receivers of troubled companies or referees for the sale of property. Some lawyers have made hundreds of thousands of dollars drawn from the assets entrusted to them from appointments, although court administrators have recently put limits on the amount of such work that a lawyer may do. Justice Spodek, who has been on the bench since 1981, said he regularly received recommendations and requests for court work from lawyers or their advocates. He added that it was helpful to have recommendations rather than to pick a lawyer blindly from the state list. "When you give out a reference, you don't want to be embarrassed," he said. The judge said that Mr. Batra had done a decent job on his court appointment and had been paid $3,000.                     A Bronx Judiciary Awash in Patronage, All Legal By Clifford J. Levy, Kevin Flynn, Leslie Eaton and Andy Newman The New York Times January 3, 2004 Last summer, Justice Douglas E. McKeon, up for re-election to State Supreme Court in the Bronx, decided he needed to raise some campaign money. The judge, though, did not turn to the residents of the Bronx to back his candidacy. Instead, his campaign solicited money from scores of lawyers, including many who regularly appear before him in court. Within weeks, his campaign had reaped more than $50,000. Justice McKeon's mixing of politics and the courts is neither illegal nor isolated. Over the years, the roughly 20 judges who handle civil litigation in Supreme Court in the Bronx —— virtually all of whom owe their jobs to the Bronx Democratic Party —— have operated, day in and day out, in a world suffused with politics. Consider, for instance, the court's dealings with Gerald L. Sheiowitz. Judges on what is known as the civil term of the Supreme Court in the Bronx have awarded him more than $300,000 in legal work in recent years, a formidable sum among the lawyers who work the courtrooms on the Grand Concourse. No one disputes that Mr. Sheiowitz is a lawyer in good standing. But courthouse regulars also understand why Mr. Sheiowitz was treated so generously. He is the treasurer of the Bronx Democratic Party. That fact may also help explain why judges in the Bronx have awarded his daughter more than $50,000 in court work, even though she is not a lawyer. For much of the last year, prosecutors and top state court officials have examined the reach and effect of politics on the state's judiciary, from Brooklyn to Buffalo. The results of their inquiries, by their own admission, have been grim: the presence of politics is so pervasive that public confidence in the courts has been damaged. Reform is overdue, the state's chief judge, Judith S. Kaye, has declared. The Bronx courthouse is certainly not unique in its troubles. But an examination of court records, interviews with judges and lawyers, and hours spent in the courtrooms reveal that its workings are emblematic of the problems identified by Judge Kaye and others. Almost no one is elected to the bench without possessing deep political connections. Favored lawyers get most of the legal work doled out by the judges. Even the law clerks and secretaries —— the judges' assistants who wield daily influence in the courtrooms —— are mostly political appointees who got their jobs largely because of whom they know. No judges here have been indicted or sent to prison, in contrast to what has occurred in Brooklyn. The Bronx judges say that they are honest and hard-working and that they have been unfairly tainted by the scandals elsewhere. And to some lawyers and court officials, the judges handling civil cases for the Bronx's top trial court do run a fairly efficient courthouse. Still, two of the Bronx judges have been censured by a state ethics panel for their conduct. Another two, including the judge responsible for overseeing all civil litigation, are former high-ranking Bronx Democratic officials who were deemed unqualified to serve on the bench by the city bar association when they first ran for election. The political influence inside the courthouse stretches across decades. It is as obvious and acknowledged today, with the borough's Democratic Party dominated by Hispanic politicians, as it was when the party was run by the old guard of Irish, Jewish and Italian leaders. In an interview, the administrative judge for the Bronx civil term, Gerald V. Esposito, defended his judges and the quality of justice they oversee. Justice Esposito is a former Democratic district leader who had no judicial experience when he was elected in 1994. At the time, the city bar association found him unqualified; he said the association came to that determination because back then, it was biased against candidates with party connections. "This system is, by and large, a terrific system," he said. But four snapshots of life in the Bronx courthouse capture, at minimum, some of that system's weak spots. Judgeship, via Legislature The career of George Friedman —— his personally engineered move from politician to Bronx judge and dispenser of courthouse spoils —— sums up much about the political grip on the courthouse. In the early 1990's, Assemblyman Friedman, the Bronx Democratic leader, was essentially facing extinction. He ruled an increasingly Hispanic borough, and it was only a matter of time before a rising class of Hispanic Democrats ousted him. So in 1994, Mr. Friedman found an alternative. He introduced a bill in Albany to create a new State Supreme Court judgeship in the Bronx. He won the crucial backing of the Bronx Republican leader, State Senator Guy J. Velella, a lawyer whose firm has long won lucrative appointments from Bronx judges. The bill passed. And so one day in September, Mr. Friedman handed over the party reins to Assemblyman Roberto Ramirez, making himself eligible to become a judge. The same day, the party nominated Mr. Friedman to run for an open State Supreme Court seat. It was not the first time Mr. Friedman had used Albany to expand the party's influence over the bench. In the early 1980's, as a junior assemblyman, he helped create a separate judicial district for the Bronx, cleaving it from a joint Manhattan-Bronx one. Back then, Mr. Friedman declared that the legislation would empower Bronx residents. But the people truly empowered were the Bronx Democratic bosses, who received their own set of Supreme Court judgeships to control. After taking the bench in 1995, Mr. Friedman quickly honored the age-old tradition of handing out court work to the party's favored lawyers. Among them was Gerald L. Sheiowitz, who served as the treasurer for both the Bronx Democratic Party and Mr. Friedman's judicial campaign committee. In all, Mr. Friedman gave more than $235,000 in court work to Mr. Sheiowitz during his time on the bench. He assigned $40,000 in court jobs to Mr. Sheiowitz's daughter, Hillary R. Sheiowitz, who went to law school but has yet to pass the bar. Justice Friedman often approved her requests for rates of $200 an hour. Neither Sheiowitz responded to telephone messages at their office. Mr. Friedman said in an interview that both Sheiowitzes did great work. He said he thought so highly of Mr. Sheiowitz that he used him as his personal accountant and real estate lawyer. Like many party leaders, Mr. Friedman acknowledges the political nature of the court system. He said political patronage helps the system by creating a stable of lawyers willing to accept the low-paying cases as well as the lucrative ones. He said he moved to create the judgeship "long before I had any thought of going on the bench," Mr. Friedman added, "As a matter of fact, I never really had a great desire to go on the bench." Mr. Friedman retired from the court in 2002, and was appointed by Judge Kaye to serve on a commission exploring judicial reforms and the need to rid the judiciary of its most blatant political influences. Judge Kaye said through a spokesman that Mr. Friedman was chosen because of his "varied réésuméé." Mr. Friedman said one of his roles on the commission was to help make proposed changes palatable to political leaders. Still, he suggested that ultimately, reformers were misguided. "I think the system we have results in an outstandingly good judiciary," he said. To improve the system, he suggested, the state should increase the judges' salaries, which are now $136,700. Donors With Pending Cases Public trust in the courts, legal experts have long asserted, depends to no small degree on avoiding even the appearance of conflicting loyalties between judges and the lawyers who go before them. For years, though, New York campaign laws have allowed those kinds of appearances to flourish. Justice Douglas E. McKeon's race for re-election last year makes that clear. With Justice McKeon fearing a tough fight, his campaign obtained a membership list from the state trial lawyers' association and used it to send solicitations to Bronx and Manhattan trial lawyers. The lawyers donated by the dozens. Among the largest donors were law firms and lawyers who routinely file malpractice lawsuits against the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the public hospitals. The judge is the Bronx justice assigned to cases against the corporation, handling a lengthy list of malpractice suits charging that patients were neglected at Jacobi, Lincoln, North Central Bronx and other hospitals. The largest donor was a law firm called Rappaport, Glass, Greene & Levine L.L.P., which gave $2,000 and has four malpractice cases before Justice McKeon, the firm said. In one of the cases, the firm asserts that Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center mishandled a delivery, leaving the infant permanently disabled. A lawyer who gave $1,500, Duane Fiedler, has two cases before the judge, according to court records. One of them accuses Lincoln of allowing a mother to bleed to death during childbirth. Such lawsuits often seek millions of dollars in damages. In all, the 150 or so donors to the McKeon committee have some 300 current cases before him, according to a comparison of the donor list and an electronic database of court records compiled by LexisNexis. Justice McKeon's fund-raising strategy is common. In the Bronx, as in the rest of the state, the coffers of State Supreme Court candidates are often filled with money from lawyers who have a stake in the decisions that the candidates make if they reach the bench. No one has pointed to a particular case in which Justice McKeon improperly favored one side or the other. But lawyers' donations to judicial candidates so troubled the Kaye panel that it proposed that judges disqualify themselves from cases involving lawyers who gave more than $500 to the judges' campaigns in the previous five years. It also said lawyers should disclose all contributions to judges when appearing before them. Under current judicial rules, to avoid the appearance of a conflict, candidates are not supposed to know who donated to their campaigns. Justice McKeon said that although he had approved the fund-raising mailing, he was not aware who gave. "This raises no ethical concerns with me personally because I intend to call them as I see them," Justice McKeon said. "I expect that anyone who gave a contribution to me did so because of the fact that in 14 years on the bench I was a worthwhile individual who should then be retained on the bench." He added, "Who else am I going to solicit except people who appear before me and have some idea of my level of scholarship?" Charles J. Rappaport, a senior partner at the Rappaport firm, said that the firm's donation was not intended to obtain special treatment and that it supported candidates with extensive trial experience. "Unfortunately, in recent years, many judges have been appointed and elected who have never tried a case," he said. Still, after being questioned by a reporter last month about the donations, Justice McKeon, who ultimately was easily re-elected and spent less than half the money he raised, promised to refund portions of donations greater than $500. Handing Out the Spoils Not quite a decade ago, a lawyer from Floral Park, Queens, began turning up in the Bronx courthouse. His name was Robert H. Helweil, and he became one of the top moneymakers among the lawyers who receive work handed out by State Supreme Court justices in the Bronx. Since 1995, Mr. Helweil has earned roughly $175,000 from nearly 30 cases; many involve managing the financial affairs of nursing home residents with dementia, according to court records. Mr. Helweil, now 80, may seem an unlikely candidate for such judicial largesse. He did not have extensive experience handling guardianships, was not a leading expert on the applicable laws and was not a powerhouse in the Bronx County Bar Association. His last full-time job, from which he retired in 1994, was as counsel for a large temporary-staffing company in Westbury, on Long Island. The reason Mr. Helweil has received so much work in the Bronx is simple, he acknowledges: the judge who appointed him in virtually every case is his former law partner, Jerry L. Crispino. Indeed, Justice Crispino, who retired from the bench in October, gave roughly a quarter of the work he handed out since 1995 to Mr. Helweil, according to court data. "He appreciates that I am a conscientious guy," Mr. Helweil said, adding that he was pleased to have the work because "I like to be busy." In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Crispino said he had appointed Mr. Helweil "because he is competent and capable, not because he was my partner" two decades ago. Mr. Crispino is a former Democratic city councilman who came to the bench in 1992. Nowhere is the insular nature of New York State Supreme Court more obvious than in the appointment of what are known as fiduciaries: guardians for the young, elderly or infirm, as well as receivers who are supposed to protect businesses and property caught up in lawsuits. Judges give these assignments to private citizens, usually lawyers, who are generally paid from the assets of the people or estates they are assigned to protect. More often than not, their hiring is heavily influenced by politics and personal relationships, state investigators have repeatedly concluded. In the Bronx, the list of fiduciaries is chock-full of the borough's political elite. The roster includes State Senator Velella and his law partners; City Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, who is a former state attorney general, and his wife; the Bronx Democratic Party's longtime election lawyer, Stanley Schlein; and the law partners of the former Democratic leader, Mr. Ramirez. Then there are those with personal links, like Mr. Helweil. In just one case, involving an elderly diamond cutter worth several million dollars, Mr. Helweil earned more than $70,000. Mr. Helweil said that in some cases he was paid nothing at all for his work, and that Justice Crispino routinely reduced his fees. The files for his cases suggest that Mr. Helweil was diligent. Last year, court administrators imposed new rules on judges that are supposed to make the awarding of fiduciary appointments fairer. It is unclear whether the rules will curb the cronyism in the system. Past efforts at reform have often failed. Whatever the impact of the new rules, Mr. Helweil said he did not expect them to affect him. Now that his old friend Mr. Crispino has retired, he said, he is not expecting many appointments from the Bronx. Well-Connected Clerks The judges are the most prominent examples of the role of politics in the state's courthouses. They are not the only ones. Maria Matos-Sepulveda was hired as a law clerk for a Supreme Court justice in the Bronx in 1997, several months after her husband, Luis R. Sepulveda, became a Democratic district leader in the borough. She passed the bar three years earlier and had worked for the state attorney general's office. Her husband had been a repeat campaign contributor to Mr. Ramirez, the borough's Democratic leader at the time. Another Bronx clerk, Martin Popovic, was once an aide to Assemblyman Stephen B. Kaufman. A third, Daniel O'Leary, has been a member of the Chippewa Democratic Club for two decades and is chairman of its law committee. The personal secretaries to Bronx judges include two former Democratic district leaders and a district leader's wife. All these people perform critical tasks in the state's highest trial court and, officially anyway, were hired at the discretion of the justices themselves. But in reality, the clerks and secretaries for Bronx judges are often the progeny of politics. Many were hired not through a process that featured the widespread recruiting of candidates, but through a system in which judges sort through a list of favored candidates sent by political leaders. Some have worked on judicial campaigns or carried petitions for the Democrats. Some are the spouses or relatives of political leaders, including district leaders, who serve as lieutenants for the party organization. Asked about the quality of the law clerks being pushed by the party, one judge said: "The people they send to the judges are by and large competent people. They are not sending hacks anymore." Ms. Matos-Sepulveda, who earns $93,000 a year, and the other clerks said they are highly qualified and had earned their jobs on their merits. Their supporters assert that judges with 14-year terms would not saddle themselves with incompetent aides when they need the party's help so infrequently. In many cases, it is the clerks who determine how effectively justice is delivered. Often it is the law clerk who writes the judge's opinion. Other times, clerks direct pretrial conferences at which opposing lawyers decide whether they can settle a case before trial. Mr. O'Leary, who earns $110,000 a year, said even if judges were appointed by expert committees instead of being elected, people would still push friends for clerk jobs. The Bronx Democratic leader, Assemblyman Joséé Rivera, said judges are not penalized for refusing party referrals. "The final analysis is the judge's," he said. But there is ample evidence that judicial hiring discretion has often been constricted. In the Bronx in the mid-1990's, colleagues of a veteran law secretary accused the Democratic Party of pressuring Justice Kenneth L. Thompson Jr. to dismiss his clerk, Howard Liker, because it was upset that his wife was doing political work for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Justice Thompson did not respond to a call seeking comment. Others who associate with Republicans have fared better. Lucianna Locorotondo is one of the few Republicans hired as a Bronx law clerk in recent years. She acknowledges that her appointment may have been bolstered by her political relationship with Senator Velella, the Bronx Republican leader who has long shared a warm relationship with the borough's Democrats. Ms. Locorotondo said she pays $300 a year to attend the Bronx Democratic Party's annual dinner, despite her party affiliation, but not to curry favor with the party. "It's not something I have to do," she said. "It's a good place to talk and to network." Ms. Locorotondo, a graduate of St. John's School of Law and Barnard College, said she was picked primarily on merit. "Being that I'm not a Democrat," she said, "they looked even more at my credentials." But critics say the current hiring system is too narrow to produce the best candidates. "The bottom line is that this is the result of a system that places the selection of judges squarely in the hands of local party leaders, not voters," said Jeremy Creelan, associate counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law. "When you do that, you are creating pressure on the judges to satisfy those party leaders."

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