FIVE DEGREES ON THE INSIDE; BABY THAT’S COLD

In this snowed-in episode of Judge Talk, Bad Judges, and the Political Hacks who pick them and assign them, we’ll continue our tour of the world of scandalous Judicial behavior, and what it demonstrates about the people serving us up that nice fat juicy justice system.

Two recent highlights from Judge News.

Judge Barbera-Dalli of Suffolk nailed phone texting prosecuting tips to the DAs in the course of a trial; suspended. This happened in December. This is a high tech enhancement of the usual tactic, where the prosecutor simply barges in on the judge and makes an improper ex parte approach to discuss something in the absence of the defense. Barbera-Dalli was just being pro active, because, after all, the purpose of the judiciary is to bend over backwards to help the prosecution, right? Sadly, and not surprisingly, the prosecutors didn’t turn her over immediately. They waited until she sent a second message several days later. Maybe this is standard operating procedure in Suffolk?

Well, no one turned in Harvey Weinstein for rape, although it went on for years. And none of the people who told an author of dubious character that Trump was unfit for the office have come forward yet. Apparently a flaw in the species.

We only found out about Barbera-Dalli because she was careless.

She was suspended as an important first step to the burying of the charges altogether. Given the electorate’s reverence for the constitution, she’s clearly destined for higher elective office. Well, maybe a second career as criminal “justice” expert on Fox,.

Then we have the wonderful Hon. Judith McMahon, formerly the Queen of Staten Island, now reassigned and doing SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT I’M SURE in Manhattan pending the disposition of charges against her. The charges arose from two civil suits filed by a disgruntled former chief clerk Michael Pulizotto, who has seemingly also managed the impossible: he retained an attorney to pursue the case who is something of a lunatic, and now an indicted lunatic, so the charges are, as they say, open to question. But there are apparently tapes, natch. One of the charges, which has the ring of truth, however, was disclosed in the federal suit brought by Pullizotto, which admittedly will now probably go nowhere due to the absence of a sane attorney to pursue it.

Hey Mike, it is estimated that there are more than 175,000 registered lawyers in NY, only a few hundred of whom are certifiable crazies, and all desperate for work. Pick one!

But the claim is that McMahon steered criminal cases away from competent Judges who, in her view, were likely to give the defense a fighting chance, as opposed to preferred jurists she deemed to be under her thumb and in the bag for the prosecutor, her husband. And that she pressured judges to declare mistrials, when she sensed that an acquittal was brewing. As if it’s not hard enough to get acquitted by a Staten Island jury, where the pools are dominated by cops, firemen, court officers and their families.You have to beat the administrative judge too? One who was supposed to abstain from involvement in criminal cases, because OCA just knew, when they assigned her, that Judy would do the right thing here.

By the way; those other S.I. Judges who were participants in, or knew of, this travesty, made no complaints, and….nothing? Maybe OCA needs a suggestion box for the use of whistleblowers.

But back to the cover-up. Time’s a wastin’.

Well, it appears that the inspector general has passed the McMahon case on to the judicial disciplinary committee, where it will either receive a dignified burial, or let us pray, result in the resignation of this disgraceful judge. And more disgrace to OCA, who put her in that position.

As tempting as it is to blame Carl Hastie, he of the sophisticated strip club appetites, [oh shit, I typed “appetities”; am I in some sort of trouble?] and his equally wonderful predecessors, for the lousy judges they’ve been polluting the judiciary with as of late, the fact is that OCA takes a bad situation and makes it much worse by elevating the worst and dimmest, and most questionable, to positions of authority, and then not backing up the competent AJs [actually there are a lot of these! Shocking!] who look around in desperation and try to think of ways to get some work out of their troops.

Recently, the AJ of the Bronx, Douglas McKeon was kicked upstairs one year before he was due to age out. McKeon was elevated and then permitted to remain AJ for about seven years, in spite of two, count ‘em, two censures for unethical conduct. So OCA, in a statement remarking on the dysfunction in the court serving a county of 1.7 million souls [where they try no jury case before its time] which they had entrusted to their former anointed for so long, cynically thanked McKeon for his excellent service and sent in one of their own, George Silver, to kick ass and take names. And hopefully they’ll back him if and when he points out that some of his charges are about as productive as tree sloths, and proud of it, and show no signs of leaving their respective trees any time soon, and here’s what we should do about it.

We’ll see. The burden of proof is on OCA, which has much to prove these days.

But as always, if it’s not in the tabloids it’s not a problem. This includes systematic judicial bias towards the prosecution, something older than Tammany Hall, but which remains an unholy disgrace. Or, on the civil side, judicial bias towards the City of New York as a defendant. Well, they’re saving tax money by not forcing the city’s lawyers — Corpse Counsel — to fulfill the same basic legal requirements that other attorneys are compelled to meet in civil term. Up and until the time that the jury drops the hammer, at least. And the City gets to pick, and veto, which judges preside over the “City Parts.” Next time you get sued, try that one: I demand a judge of my choosing, or I’m not coming.

Can you imagine that happening? Oh, Noah Dear, right. But that’s Brooklyn, so it hardly counts.

Oh, Tommy Moore. Right, that’s another. I withdraw the rhetorical question.

But yes, the City chooses its Judges, and has never been shy about exercising its veto over Judges who are so careless as to treat the City the same as other parties. Check out what happened with J. Paul Victor in the Bronx a few years back. ‘Nuff said.

This is a story screaming for treatment in the NY Times, which had an extended series about the Bronx Criminal Court awhile back, got bored, and after a decent interval, stole silently away, which is the way of the [our] world. Suffice it to say that if it was well-heeled upper east siders and middle class tax payers from Queens who were being methodically processed through the dysfunctional , shameful and wasteful criminal justice system the changes would be much more than cosmetic, I assure you. But they’re not, so literally nothing has happened in Criminal Court, although The Gray Lady gave it a shot and lots of ink. And OCA gave it the full PR okey-doke treatment, and declared victory after a decent interval.

On the civil side, the corporations have been fleeing the Courts for private mediation. How long before they start telling their political retainers that they don’t want to pay for a public court system that they don’t use? Or are they doing this now? First they came for public education…..

Hell, why would Mr. or Ms. CEO want to wait a decade before they get a jury, or make a motion for summary judgment to this Court system, where the chances of getting a reasonable decision in a reasonable period of time becomes more remote with each passing year, with each new Hastie appointment? And if they get a jury, will the pool of those unfortunates trapped in jury duty have the education to understand the nuances of a corporate case which the lawyers themselves struggle to explain? Maybe if you take away their cell phones first.

I might copyright that: Hastie Appointment. Too late?

In spite of the decline and fall of print journalism, Old Journalism still has power over OCA. But the NY papers all buried [on request? inquiring minds need to know] the incredible story of how the Court Officers and Correction Officers simply refused to deliver prisoners to the Bronx Courts one day out of pique, after a Judge properly refused to dismiss charges against one of them, a scenario worthy of Putin’s Russia. Yep, Sonny I’m old enough to remember the rule of law. If not the papers, then who?

But that’s enough crabbing for a snowed-in subzero afternoon, and we’ll get back to Guardianship soon, so until next time remember, in the words of the immortal Senator Roman Hruska [Was Roman one of ours, Agrippina?] in the selection of Judges, Mediocre People Deserve Representation too.

Oh, I just channeled Hruska from Hades, and he has an update: “I didn’t mean Judy McMahon, idiots.”

INFERNAL NOTIONS COUNTER

I got some damn fool notions to share with you. And I’m just the guy to do it. I’ll have you know that I am in talks with a major production company for a Roman Emperor reality show [although talks are not going well, they keep telling me that “the Kids don’t want to hear That Latin Stuff”]. But I have won the “Talk like a Roman Emperor’ competition, which is held every July, seven years running.

So just throwin’ this out there. Some of these ideas I will fight for to the death – I’m practiced in this — others not so much, and sure, there are certain ideas that are so outrageous that they can’t even be discussed. These ain’t that kind.

For example, your friendly Neighborhood Nursing Home brings on a petition as a ‘concerned party’, but everyone and their goldfish knows that the one and only purpose is to get Medicaid for the patient, because the family ain’t helping. No great crime, but why not require the N.H. to post a $15,000 bond as a condition for the appointment of a family guardian of the property, so that when — I meant if, of course – the guardian fails to file accountings, we have something with which to pay the lawyer we appoint to clean up the mess.

Maybe you’ll like this one better.

Forget this business of trying to make accountants of lay people, as discussed in the last post. Instead, let’s just send the guardian’s bank statements to a court examiner, who will be paid to prepare accountings, report to the court, and also remove guardians who don’t spend wisely. Make the CE co-title holder to the account. Remove one of the tasks from the Guardian, the one they never do.

In one county at least, they’re sort of started this process by directing the banks to send duplicate statements to the court examiners. Good first step. Some of the banks –I know you will find this almost impossible to believe — are balking, and trying to impose extra fees. How can this be, they so love donating their services, and paying us hideously high rates of interest for our savings [Special Introductory Rate, .0119%] Some banks even want to have ‘relationships’ with us, right? So sweet. Oh, don’t touch me there; I’ll scream.

Obama letting these slimy loan sharks walk free after ’08 will forever remain his worst legacy, worse than due-process-less droning of an American citizen, but I digress.

How about this: surety bonds for everybody. No guardian of the property ever will be appointed again with a waiver of the bond, since if there’s money or property of any kind, there will be a duty to report. This will result in fewer family members becoming guardians, which will cause enormous angst, but the flag will still wave and the rockets red glare.

Here’s one you’ll probably hate: no Guardianship proceeding should exceed three days in length. If it goes longer, it will do nothing but inflate fees, mostly incurred against the oldster’s estate. How much benefit to the AIP do you suppose that such costs provide? None. Very occasionally Slim. But too often, the lawyer appointees, who, I get it, are used to putting in long hours for cases that provide no compensation, will take their time in those instances where, thank you Jesus, they are finally getting paid. Any more questions, Counselor? Just a few more, Your Honor. Its only human nature, but we don’t have to let it happen, or we can at least impose reasonable limits. So line up your fifty-seven witnesses. We’re knocking off this sucker, maximum, in three days. No more adjournments. I don’t care how many devoted children the AIP has from the five marriages, each of whom wants to be heard with respect to whether Sis or Bro have never visited Mom until two weeks ago. We get the point. You may step down. Your objection is noted.

Have you ever heard of ‘unbundled’ legal representation? Me neither. Never mind.

Oh, just remembered [I’m old]. It’s where you buy some aspect of legal representation, a la carte, so to speak, without the lawyer coming to court to represent you. No notice of appearance. So you go to his office, let’s say, with some guardianship papers that you downloaded off the internet, and Ulysses S. Unbundled Esq. helps you fill out the papers and tells you how to serve them after you submit them to the Court. Just as an example. You can buy something else, or tell ‘em to ‘fill ‘er up’ with everything on it. Give me some of that high quality legal representation. For a price.

This is my intro to the Wonderful 2010s and the current plague of pro se Guardianship petitions, and folks, it is a plague. OCA thinks it’s wonderful that lay people can now represent themselves in Court proceedings. Coming next week: remove your own gall bladder. And get a free Cap Snaffler.

Why do they think this is a good idea? Is there something wrong with them? Opiods? These are probably not the same people who have to wade through hideously idiotic legal papers suing the landlord because the slow elevator made them impotent, or in the case of guardianship petitioners, pointless applications that are barely-disguised lists of grievances by one family member against another, which an elderly mom or dad will get to experience in excruciating detail over several [not more than three!] days of tedious misery.

Or you can get a bad tenant who has run out the string in Housing Court who figures it out: Hey, I can get another few months delay, and stop the eviction, if the Court decides that I’m too crazy to pay rent. I have been quite depressed lately, Your Honor.

Some of these pro se’s have gotten unbundled help, or some help from the office of the self-represented, or none at all. Almost never are these bona fide petitions, and if by some miracle they manage to make it through to Judgment [a combined decision/short-form Judgment prepared for the pro se, courtesy of a very generous law secretary, who in effect is doing free legal work for a litigant] good luck on getting accounts out of any of these new guardians.

Why are we doing this? Why are we, in many cases, taking fees away from genuine Guardianship attorneys, for those cases that have any validity at all, but more to the point, why are we taking court time and resources away from valid cases to help pro se’s give vent to their grievances? And why does OCA think this is a peachy idea?

Here’s why. Must I tell you everything? The long term trend of shifting control of the Court system from lawyers and judges — who should have control because they actually do this work and know what happens in the real world — to bureaucratic bean counters, ‘efficiency experts’- which is the history of the last thirty years, folks – has given rise to this idiocy. An attorney who practiced law for decades would stand up at a meeting in OCA, bang the table and argue vehemently against this nonsense. I believe.

But there don’t appear to be such persons at OCA anymore. [e.g.; who thought that AJ McMahon would behave herself in Staten Island?] That’s how we wound up with a program to take auto accident cases from one county, with a huge backlog of such cases, and remove, and distribute hundreds of motions from those cases, over several northern counties all over New York State. In two different Judicial departments, with different legal precedents.

They really did this.

I got nothing to add.

Other examples would be the programs [this will be an innovation, I tell you!] that are instituted on a very frequent basis and imposed from above, a new form to fill out, a new procedure, a brain fart of upper echelon bureaucrats, some shit bestowed on lower echelon clerks, without trying it out first as a pilot, or asking the people who will actually be doing the work whether they think it’s a good idea. This is such a common schtick with these people that it hardly warrants discussion, as they say. Special Foreclosure Part. Don’t get me started. A waste of resources, just begging for an investigation.

We’ve come full circle; my bright ideas to start, ending with complaints about the bird-brained ideas of the Powers That Be.

But like hearing dates, bitching sessions should be limited, so I’m going to stop right there. In the meantime, let’s keep this in mind: not every voice should be heard, and not every rude encounter is harassment, and it trivializes real criminality to bitch about every little damn thing. This is something I would always tell my slaves when they complained about this slight or that.

So behave yourself, because the ‘I’m offended” contingent are on the march. They even managed to piss off enough people to get a jackass elected president.

And until next time remember: Everyone who says ‘it’s not about me’ is lying, just as no one ever said anything respectful after saying “with all due respect.,”

And as always, Mundus vult decipi.

WHY BLOG ABOUT ARTICLE 81 GUARDIANSHIP

What excitement, a N.Y. court blog. So 1997. Who does that anymore? What is a blog anyway? Is it stream-of-consciousness musings, like a dopey Larry King column? Remember those? Something like:

“Why do people say that you can’t put cheese on fish sauce? Did you ever have au gratin crab or shrimp? Delicious. What’s the difference? Next time you’re in a restaurant….etc”

Nah, none of that here. I’ll do my best, but bear with me. I’m old. I was stabbed to death by greedy centurions in 193 AD. [They got away with it too; even then Dennis Quirk had enormous clout] You think I should bother trying to keep abreast of the latest and greatest? To hell with that. I may be dead, but I’m not doing Facebook. That’s final.

Let’s talk about the recent past, the last two months, August and September. It was Janet Defiore’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Summer. And like so many bad things, it came in threes. [Yeah, Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Got that out of my system. Any idea how sick of this phrase we ancient Romans are?]

It started with that Bookstaver guy butt-dialing to a NY Post Reporter an account of how he maintained a pricey no-show job, courtesy of a deal between the outgoing Chief Handsome John Lippman and J. Difiore.

The butt-dial guy was being paid good money to do PR. How good at this was he, do you suppose?

This happens at a time when the Court is whining about not having the money for luxury items, like Part Clerks. [This whining has been going on since 470 BCE]. Fortunately, it was August, when most NY Times readers had not yet returned from the Hamptons.

But this was followed by the fiasco in Staten Island, with AJ McMahon, a real charmer by all accounts, meddling in criminal cases. This, after the Powers That Be in the Office of Court Administration [“OCA”] went along with the fiction that McMahon would only handle civil cases in the Isle of Staten, and voluntarily leave the criminal docket to a different A.J., because McMahon’s husband is the District Attorney. Sure, that’ll work. The only part of this that wasn’t predictable was the taping of the whole thing by a disgruntled chief clerk. Who is gay, and didn’t appreciate mockery about it from Ms. M., who is clearly a class act. She shopped cases to judges more likely to convict, a practice which is endemic, and which I’ll come back to in a future post.

Then Brooklyn did what it does so well – embarrass the rest of the state court system – when it was revealed that a Supreme Court Judge, Noach Dear was allowed to sit in the lower, Civil Court [what, did he feel unworthy and want his salary lowered?] on days when the Orthodox had their cases on. Strictly coincidental it wasn’t. As a politician, these were his Peeps, now his personal defendants of choice. Again, a Judge drifting over to an area where he/she wasn’t supposed to be.

Hilariously, the Post seemed to imply that Dear did this just because he was uncontrollable, deciding on his own to stroll into Civil Court on nights when defendants of a particular ethnicity had their cases on. The Post urged the Court System to “rein him in.” There is no administration in Kings apparently, and no one is in charge of assigning cases or judges; Judges decide when and where to show up, and they summon forth the cases they want to hear that day. Next week, Dear might get the urge to drop in at Family Court. If only there was some way of tracking his movements. Do Post readers actually believe this? Nah, they’re already turned to Page Six.

How would you like to be some plaintiff suing a Hasidem merchant and seeing that the defendant brought his own hometown umpire? [the City of New York picks its own favorite Judges to hear their cases, but I digress]. There is a well-founded, although distasteful rumor that the clerks in Kings have come to refer to those days as “Jewsdays.”

My good friend The Google tells me that the Administrative Judge for Civil Term in Brooklyn is Lawrence Knipel. Hello Larry. And Larry Marx [Hello Second Larry] and J. Difiore have no idea where Judges are being assigned on the other side of the East River? The telegraph lines went down years ago I guess. Forget it Jake; its Brooklyn.

Here’s what’s going to happen, and I say this with the assurance of a Roman Emperor who lasted all of 87 days [People Tell Me that no Emperor was ever better than me at predicting things, at least for 86 days]- Most likely, nothing will happen, until there’s another scandal. Then, J. Difiore or Larry Marx will issue some sort of silly edict – let’s say something that tells Court employees that they better show up for work, and not be like Bookstaver, and a nicely printed memorandum will circulate to thrill the hearts of men, or something.

Oh, we did that already? Sorry.

Better yet, let’s give all of the employees a new form to fill out! How they love forms. That’s the ticket. Then we can hire more clerks to process the forms? Oh, no, we won’t do that. The same clerks we have now will do the processing. But we’ll hire several new supervisors downtown to oversee the form process. Yes, this will work wonderfully.

There will be no impact from all this fancy managin’ on the places that are most out of control, which are, for the most part, those areas lying off the continental US mainland. But this should suffice for their purposes, since the few entities paying any attention to the court system apparently like Janet Di Fiore. So far.

If she should ever becomes governor, that hair will become nationally famous. But for now, all is well, and we’ll turn again to our affairs. Hell, we already have.

This happens over and over again – it happened a little while back in the Bronx, when the Times happened to notice that the Criminal Court didn’t do anything, so they did the old misdirection play. They scape-goated a good judge, Alvarado, who was trying like the devil to get his Judges to take the bench on time, and changed administration, amidst much fan fare. They announced victory later after a decent interval, with no change whatsoever, except that the newspapers had lost interest, which was the only goal. Running out the clock again. The main problem is that all of this undermines any argument the courts can make about getting more money and more personnel. Why should we waste money on the likes of you, Court System, or on Judges who take dubious paid leaves of absence that last for years, as was the case recently in, oh, Brooklyn, right. Cuomo despises the Court system, and this plays right into his hands. Happy to help you out, Governor.

The amazing thing about our Court System is how the counties that screw up the most – I’m training my steely-eyed gaze here on the East Bank of the East River — tend to produce most of the power brokers in OCA. Nice job; here is your reward.

Next Time, or the time after that, I’ll present my ideas for solving every damn problem in the New York Court System, effortlessly and at no cost, because I’m here to help. Remember, pars sanitas velle sanari fuit. Whatever.