Judges' Grudges Kindle Clash

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
July 16, 2006

A rare and nasty spat has erupted among normally stone-faced appeals judges over the case of a judicial activist whose probe of Manhattan jurists sparked an FBI investigation.

Presiding Judge Richard Andrias ripped his colleagues in the appellate division July 6 for rejecting a motion by reformer Anthony DeRosa, blasting their action as "both unprecedented and contrary to law."

DeRosa, who sought the four-judge panel's permission to hone his appeal of a ruling against him in an eviction case, had "a statutory right" to appeal, and thus didn't even need the judges' OK to go forward, Andrias argued.

But they turned him down anyway.

Andrias' stunning dissent was a public slap in the face to the other panel members: David Friedman, Luis Gonzalez and John Sweeny.

DeRosa has been thrust into the spotlight after he discovered that the judge who ruled against him in the eviction case, Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, owned a block of stock in Chase Manhattan Bank, which wanted to foreclose on his Upper West Side co-op.

He then began researching other undisclosed conflicts, leading to an FBI probe of Diamond and other judges.

DeRosa said that he was encouraged by Andrias' dissent, but that he believes the panel's ruling was payback for his probe.

"Let's call it what it is - retaliation," he said.

Judge Eyed in Court-Transcript Probe

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
May 7, 2006changed transcripts

The state court watchdog is investigating charges that Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Marilyn Diamond changed official transcripts, allegedly to help cover up favorable rulings she made for pals, The Post has learned.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct interviewed court reporter Maurice Schwartzberg two weeks ago - and he admitted making "substantial revisions" to transcripts at the judge's request in one case.

Diamond is the central figure in an FBI probe into whether judges hid personal and professional ties to litigants, then ruled in their favor.

The case involving Schwartzberg pitted a co-op owner against his building at 40 Fifth Ave. over the installation of a washer-dryer.

The owner, Sam Levin, twice asked Diamond to recuse herself in 2004 after discovering that real-estate broker Douglas Elliman - which managed the co-op - rented out apartments in the judge's townhouse.

Diamond refused and ruled against Levin.

Judge Slapped in Art 'Scam'

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
December 25, 2005

Art scam

A federal judge — citing 24 alleged illegal acts — has ordered embattled Manhattan jurist Marylin Diamond and two associates to enter settlement talks with a family that claims the trio stole hundreds of millions from an elderly art heiress.

The judge ruled the heiress' surviving relatives showed enough proof of two dozen fraudulent acts by Diamond's co-trustee of the family trust, Janet Neschis, and another associate to allow their racketeering lawsuit to go forward.

Manhattan federal Judge Richard Berman also found that the relatives presented sufficient evidence for a special trust to be created to freeze the late woman's fortune, which the relatives value as high as $2 billion.

At issue is control over hundreds of millions that art-collecting film producer Jacques Gelman left his wife, Natasha, 20 years ago and which she signed over to Diamond and Neschis six months before her death in 1998.

She also gave Robert Littman, a friend, the Gelmans' $700 million Mexican art collection and two homes in Mexico. But a lawsuit by surviving relatives alleges the two women and Littman conspired to take advantage of the Alzheimer's-stricken octogenarian.

Berman's 51-page ruling on Dec. 13 said the special trust was needed to "prevent unjust enrichment" by the trio and he ordered both sides to begin talks to resolve the four-year-old case.

"This is a big victory for my children," said Jerry Jung, 59, a nephew of Natasha's who heads a family of four that sued over the money.

The Jung suit names Neschis and Littman as chief defendants and Diamond as a "co-conspirator."

Neschis, the daughter of Jacques Gelman's longtime attorney, and Diamond are friends and former law associates in Neschis' estate-planning practice.

Gelman discovered Mexican movie legend Cantinflas, who starred in the original "Around the World in 80 Days."

He also befriended Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and collected masterpieces from them and other muralists, along with about 90 paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Dali.

Natasha Gelman, who kept the European art in a multimillion-dollar apartment on Park Avenue, wrote a boiler-plate will in 1993 that named the Jungs and others, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as beneficiaries, the suit claims.

Executor fees

But four years later, while suffering from dementia, she tore up the document and replaced it with an irrevocable trust, handing control to Neschis and Diamond, whom she named as co-trustees. They became executors when she died six months later in 1998.

Since then, the two have collected more than $1 million a year each for their work on the estate.

 

 

 

Anturia Foundation

The case includes allegations that Diamond and Neschis also ripped off the Anturia Foundation, an overseas entity Jacques Gelman set up in Liechtenstein that was once worth $40 million but is now worth about $6 million.

Joining the Jung suit is an Israeli research firm, the Weizmann Institute of Science, which claims its inheritance from the Anturia Foundation was fraudulently eliminated when Natasha Gelman rewrote the foundation's bylaws in 1992.

Diamond, who became a New York State Supreme Court justice in 1990, is under investigation by the FBI for her role in the Gelman estate and for allegedly making favorable rulings from the bench to help out pals and companies in which she owns stock.

Paul Curran, who represents all three defendants, said he was "pleased" Berman ruled Natasha was of sound mind when she rewrote the Anturia bylaws in 1992. He plans to file a motion with judge Berman to reconsider his ruling.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/59440.htm

                   Boys Free of 'Millionaire' Welfare Mom

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
February 20, 2005

First she refused to give her sons dinner or pay the electric bill at their $4,000-a-month apartment on the Upper East Side. Now heiress and alleged welfare cheat Linda Jacobs has had her youngest boy arrested.

Jeffrey, 16, spent the night in the Manhattan central lockup known as The Tombs after his mom had him charged with criminal mischief following an argument three weeks ago.

But the story has a happy ending: The charges were eventually dropped and Jeffrey and his brother Jason who so badly wanted to escape their troubled mom they secretly collected evidence of her alleged welfare scam are finally living with dad.

Things weren't so peachy on Jan. 26, when a bizarre encounter unfolded that led to Jeffrey's arrest.

That morning, Linda woke up her son by tossing papers at him showing she'd asked city child-service workers to step in and possibly take custody of the teen, he said.

"She said, 'They're coming to get you,' " Jeffrey said.

Jeffrey said he was held overnight in The Tombs with about 30 adult suspects before he could be arraigned and freed. The Manhattan DA's office has since dropped the charges.

"I'm happy. I'm relieved," said the boys' father, Gary Jacobs, who was awarded temporary custody following an emergency hearing in Manhattan Family Court Feb. 7 that the mother did not attend.

Gary, 51, an apparel consultant who's been fighting to get custody since he lost the boys following his bitter 1999 divorce, said that after the arrest, his ex-wife ordered Jason and Jeffrey out of their East 85th Street apartment.

And so he asked Family Court Judge Susan Knipps to grant her wish.

The change is the latest twist in a bizarre family saga that's seen the teens accuse their mother of not feeding them or paying the electric bill at their apartment then pocketing welfare benefits, despite having access to her family's millions.

Their allegations sparked a state welfare-fraud investigation of Linda Jacobs, while the FBI probed Supreme Court Judge Marylin Diamond, who gave her custody.

The kids say Diamond ignored their wishes after they begged to live with their dad, telling a court-appointed shrink that their mom abused them.

Both sides were back in court Monday to determine if the temporary custody arrangement would be made permanent, but this time Linda showed up with two lawyers and got an extension.

Both boys remain deeply bitter about Diamond's ruling and the years they were forced to live with their mother.

Diamond and Linda Jacobs did not return calls seeking comment.

(Gary Jacobs and his children have FINALLY obtained some justice. On Monday, March 21, 2005 Gary Jacobs was awarded by the Court PERMANENT full custody of the children, which is exactly what both he and his children have wanted for years. )

 

 

gail koof

Contentious Divorce

By Mark Fass
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
February 18, 2005

The Court of Appeals has declined to hear an appeal of Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond's decision to award Jacoby & Meyers owner Gail Koff 65 percent of the marital assets in her contentious divorce.

The Appellate Division, First Department, had upheld Justice Diamond's decision by a 3-2 margin, which included a 25-page dissent by Justice David B. Saxe.

The Court of Appeals based its decision on jurisdictional grounds, stating that "the two-justice dissent is not on a question of law." Rather, the dissent centered on the propriety of what Justice Saxe described as the "highly skewed equitable distribution award."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NY Lawyers Sanctioned in Suit
That Put Spotlight on Judges' Holdings

By Tom Perrotta
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
February 14, 2005

An appeals court has sanctioned two attorneys in a controversial lawsuit that has brought attention to the financial holdings of state judges who preside over cases involving large corporations.

The Appellate Division, First Department, sanctioned David B. Cohen $2,000 and Thomas D. Shanahan $250 for frivolous conduct while representing Anthony DeRosa, who has been challenging the foreclosure on his Manhattan apartment by Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond upheld the foreclosure.

The First Department later agreed with the outcome of her ruling but said she should not have heard the case because she owned stock in JP Morgan Chase. The court later rescinded that opinion and said the judge had no conflict, largely because JP Morgan Chase and Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. were distinct entities.

Last week, the court issued its third ruling in the case, saying Mr. DeRosa's attorneys amended an appellate caption to include both corporate names in an attempt to bolster their argument against Justice Diamond.

The court said Mr. Cohen expressed no remorse for his actions and made "derogatory and undignified statements about the judiciary."

The court said Mr. Shanahan accepted responsibility for the act and demonstrated respect for the court. Mr. Shanahan said, "I was sanctioned $250 in a pro bono case that I've never been paid for. The message is that for unpopular litigants, anyone who dares represent them ought to watch their step."

Mr. Cohen could not be reached for comment.

(In his dissenting opinion Judge Richard T. Andrias of the Appellate Division First Department stated as follows:

Andrias, J., dissents in part in a memorandum as follows: Because the
motion court did not disclose its interest in Chase to the parties, under
the express terms of Judiciary Law § 14, it was without power to hear the
case and the orders appealed from are null and void. Thus, this Court
should not address the merits of the motions, but simply remand the
matter to Supreme Court for determination by another justice.

The majority ignores the well-established principle that a court's lack
of subject matter jurisdiction, which is the case where a judge is
statutorily disqualified, is generally not waivable and may be challenged
for the first time on appeal (Murray v State Liq. Auth., 139 AD2d 461
[1988], lv denied 72 NY2d 810 [1988]; see also Matter of Fry v Village of
Tarrytown, 89 NY2d 714, 718 [1997] [such issue " 'may be [raised] at any
stage of the action, and the court may, ex mero motu [on its own motion],
at any time, when its attention is called to the facts, refuse to proceed
further and dismiss the action' ").
 

Cour:t $Laps Lawyers in Conflicts Case

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
February 13, 2005

An appeals panel has slammed two prominent lawyers with fines for "frivolous conduct" after they represented a man who complained about judicial conflicts of interest.

The state Appellate Division fined David Cohen $2,000 and Tom Shanahan $250 for wasting its "time and energy" in arguing for Anthony DeRosa, a Wall Street researcher whose private probe of Manhattan judges spurred an FBI investigation into the alleged conflicts.

DeRosa, locked in a foreclosure battle with Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. over his Upper West Side apartment, lost his case before Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond — only to discover that Diamond owned at least $40,000 worth of Chase Manhattan Bank bonds and JPMorgan Chase stock and had other ties to the bank.

So he asked the panel to toss out her decision, citing a judicial law that stated any judge who failed to disclose a financial interest in a case, "however small," was automatically disqualified from hearing it.

But in the latest appellate decision, a 4-1 majority ruled his lawyers should have taken their complaint about Diamond's conflicts to her before they took it to them.

The panel previously agreed that Diamond was conflicted, then reversed itself, claiming the judge might not have realized JPMorgan Chase and Chase Manhattan Mortgage were related companies.

Judge Probed in 'Salon Pal' Custody Furor custody

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
January 16, 2005

EXCLUSIVE - The FBI is investigating allegations that heiress and alleged welfare cheat Linda Jacobs was pals with the judge who gave her custody of her two sons.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond awarded Jacobs custody of her teen sons, Jason and Jeffrey, in 1999  even though the boys told a court-appointed shrink that their mom beat and abused them.

Diamond ignored those claims and their pleas to live with their father, Gary Jacobs, due to her friendship with their mother, according to the boys and the father.

"It's a corrupt endeavor, what happened here," said Jason, 17, a private-school senior who has said his mother is a wealthy welfare cheat who collects benefits but doesn't buy food for him or his brother.

Jacobs and Diamond live just a few blocks from each other on the Upper East Side and got their nails done at the same salon.

The mother also served as a broker for a building the judge owns at 920 Park Ave., records show, although it's unclear when she did so.

Diamond and Linda Jacobs were both customers for years at Vogue Nails at 1220 Lexington Ave., said salon manager Chilson Lee.

FBI agents pored over the appointment book this summer, asking if the two ever came in together, she said.

Lee doubted they came in together but couldn't be sure.

"We don't know if they know each other  they haven't come in in a long time," said Lee, whose salon has been open since 1995.

But Gary Jacobs said the two women both had manicures at Vogue around 5:30 p.m. on July 22  the night before the case was due back in Family Court before a different judge.

Diamond claimed in court papers last year that she didn't know Linda Jacobs and had no relationship with the real-estate agency Douglas Elliman, which once listed Jacobs as the broker for the judge's Park Avenue apartment building.

It's unclear when Jacobs might have represented the building. She's no longer listed as the broker. Douglas Elliman did not return calls seeking clarification.

Court records obtained by The Post show that Diamond  who had not presided on the case in five years  personally requested the Jacobs case file April 13, six weeks before Linda Jacobs filed a petition in Family Court asking that Gary be ordered to make support payments.

She lost that bid but appealed. The appeal was denied Monday.

Agents have interviewed Linda and Gary Jacobs and Gary's former attorney, Walter Anderocci, who told The Post he met twice with investigators on the matter.

Diamond's husband, Franklin Weisberg, denied that his wife knew Jacobs.

Diamond and Linda Jacobs did not return calls seeking comment.

Misery of Rich Welfare Mom

By Brad Hamilton and Heather Gilmore
New York Post
January 16, 2005

The Upper East Side family whose heiress mother stands accused of being a welfare cheat by her sons is cursed with a history of tragic deaths, depression and a shocking revelation that she was adopted.

The boys' allegations which include claims that mom Linda Jacobs stopped feeding them, despite having access to millions sparked a probe by state welfare-fraud investigators, as The Post reported last week.

They grabbed bank records that show she got $60,000 from a mysterious source in just seven months last year. And they believe their uncle Samuel Pauker cut her off in October, a month after their grandfather died, to force their dad to pay money he doesn't have.

Pauker didn't deny cutting off the mother, but said if it was done, it was to make the father honor support payments to his sister.

The boys' amateur sleuthing  to prove the shocking charges and ultimately get their mom out of their lives  shed light on one of New York's most dysfunctional families.

"It's a very unfortunate family that has gone through a lot of pain," said Pauker, brother of Linda Jacobs, 52, whose sons Jason, 17, and Jeffrey, 16, say she's fraudulently getting public assistance.

Their allegations are just the latest blow to a once-happy clan that in the 1990s enjoyed all the trappings of the father's $500,000 income: exotic vacations, a luxury apartment on East End Avenue, a $1.2 million home in East Hampton and private school for the kids.

But the seeds of the family's unraveling were sown years earlier, according to the father, Gary Jacobs, 51, a coats merchandiser. He says his divorce from Linda in 1999 ruined him.

Her parents  Conservative Jews and country club golfers from Rockville Centre, L.I.  were so concerned with appearances that they never told Linda or her brother that both were adopted, he says.

The siblings didn't find out until they were in their 20s, he says, when they learned the truth from a childhood friend of Linda's.

"Linda says to her mother, 'I was just told that I was adopted. Is that true?' " said Gary.

"She says yes, and then she turns around and goes back to washing the dishes."

Linda's father, Irving Pauker, who worked in the family knitwear business, tried to make it up to the kids by giving them each $10,000 so they could buy whatever they wanted, Gary says.

Her parents also had trouble dealing with the premature deaths of Gary's entire family his parents and brother Jason all died within eight years of each other a tragic turn that left him battling depression, he says.

His mother-in-law, Elsa Pauker, blamed Gary for how the deaths hurt Linda, who has battled depression most of her adult life, he says.

Gary said he was friendly with Irving, but the Paukers pressured him to do things their way.

When he and Linda reached their mid-30s and hadn't conceived, he discovered he had a vascular problem that prevented her from getting pregnant. The parents told him to have surgery.

"I said what the hell. I'm not even in charge of my own life," said Gary, who went through with the procedure.

After the children were born, Gary was making a six-figure income, and the family moved into a $1 million apartment on East End Avenue.

But problems soon came up.

A resident of the building recalled seeing the mother spank one of the kids on the elevator.

"He was crying and screaming, and she looked totally out of it. She always looked frazzled," the resident said.

Gary said his wife's main interest was shopping.

The divorce was nasty  and bizarre.

The kids accused their mom of beating and abusing them, submitting photos of Jason's bruised legs and a tape of her allegedly berating them. They also told a court-appointed shrink that they wanted to live with their father.

But the judge gave custody to Linda, and Gary believes he never had a chance in court  he says he lost every decision, even though he used three attorneys and spent $160,000.

At one point, the judge, Marylin Diamond, threatened to sanction his lawyer for his "sexual posturing" in court.

He believes her family's intention was to force him to go back to his wife.

The divorce began to undermine his business and he went bankrupt in 2001.

In the end, Gary agreed to pay $3,500 a month in spousal maintenance but no child support. Whoever is with the kids is supposed to pick up the tab.

She walked away with $1 million in stocks and the sales of their homes in the Hamptons and the Upper East Side, he says, a figure her brother did not dispute.

But afterward, Gary met with judicial activist Anthony DeRosa and together they found evidence, they claim, that Diamond and Linda knew each other.

"I was set up and the kids paid the price," he said.

So he stopped writing her monthly checks but still gave her about $65,000 since 2001, he says.

Linda went to court this summer to ask for child support and was turned down, a Family Court judge ruling that she brought no proof she was owed money.

Samuel calls Gary a deadbeat and says the boys' harassment of their mother "left her so discombobulated she didn't bring the right paperwork."

She went on public assistance after Con Ed shut off the electricity to the family's apartment on East 85th Street, he said.

Meanwhile police have been called to the apartment at least half a dozen times in the last six months to complain that they shout at her and argue over money  and were there again last week after The Post's story appeared, questioning Jason about the bank and welfare documents, they said.

Now the two are avoiding going home. Jeffrey is staying at a friend's house.

The split-up of the family "really messed up my life," he said.

Said Jason: "The last seven years have been hell."

Arrest Our Mom

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
January 9, 2005

Two teen sons of an Upper East Side heiress say they are so desperate to get away from their abusive mom, they've asked the state attorney general to bust her for welfare fraud.

Jason Jacobs, 17, and his brother Jeffrey, 16, say their mom, Linda, pockets benefits while refusing to buy them food or pay the electric bill at their $4,000-a-month apartment.

The prep-school kids  accustomed to a privileged life of Hawaiian vacations and East Hampton summers  claim they're abused, neglected and were recently offered a dinner of half an apple.

So they've become amateur sleuths  collecting bank statements and benefits records and delivering the documents to their father, Gary Jacobs, who passed them to welfare-fraud investigators last week.

Going on welfare, they say, is a despicable ploy to convince a judge to slap new child-support payments on their financially beleaguered father.

The boys believe their mom  who they say hasn't worked in 25 years  has long relied on her family fortune.

But that changed in November, they said, when she lost a court bid to impose child support on her ex-husband. She's appealing the decision.

Instead of funneling upward of $15,000 a month into her bank account, her family began paying her rent directly, the boys suspect.

The goal of the cut-off, Jason said, was to "create an image" of poverty and "put financial pressure on my father."

Gary Jacobs was never required to pay child support under the divorce settlement but was ordered to give Linda $3,500 a month in spousal maintenance, which he did until three years ago.

But his ex-wife never complained after he stopped making the payments, he said.

"All these years, she never asked me for any money," he said. "And there's a reason. Her family is wealthy. Plus she walked away from the marriage with close to a million dollars."

Jason, a senior at a private Manhattan school that charges $23,000 a year in tuition, says he buys his own food and staples with money he saved from after-school jobs and summer work as a camp counselor.

As for school, Gary paid the tuition up until three years ago, when Linda agreed to take over. This year, the kids said, the school is giving them substantial aid.

The state attorney general's office is looking at seven monthly bank statements the boys grabbed that show she's received at least $59,900 this year from a mysterious source. The last statement is from October; she allegedly began receiving benefits in November.

According to the state's welfare rules, a family of three would need to show an annual income of $15,670 or less and have $2,000 or less in assets or cash to qualify for assistance. Cash gifts or loans from a family member count as income.

A spokesman for the state agency that runs welfare would not comment on what benefits, if any, Jacobs may be receiving.

"But I cannot envision a situation where a person paying $4,000 a month in rent would be eligible for benefits," said spokesman Michael Hayes.

Linda Jacobs' late father, Irving Pauker, who died in September, amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune in apparel manufacturing and real estate.

Still, even Gary isn't sure what money his ex-wife might have.

She did receive about $500,000 in the divorce settlement and had stocks, bonds and other funds that pushed the total to $1 million, he says.

She's also left a $25,000 deposit on the East 85th Street apartment where she lives with the boys, records show.

The kids said they discovered their mom was on welfare after Con Ed shut the lights off for three months of non-payment. She went to a welfare office in Brooklyn to get help with the electrical bill, they said.

They believe she gets about $600 a month in benefits.

All while making their lives a living hell, they said.

She's twice called cops on them  for allegedly taking her welfare card and arguing with her about money, they said.

The squalor and conflict is a far cry from the worry-free life the boys once led, living in a million-dollar apartment on East End Avenue, taking vacations to Hong Kong and eating at The Palm and Chin Chin.

When they weren't vacationing abroad, the family headed out to their $1.2 million beach house in East Hampton.

And Linda benefited as well: full-time household help, shopping sprees at Bloomingdale's, a gym membership at Equinox.

But that was before the couple's 18-year marriage dissolved.

The bitter breakup in 1999 ended with a judge awarding custody to the mother, despite allegations by both kids that she beat them. Jason submitted photos of his bruised legs to the court.

"She used to throw textbooks at me," Jeffrey said.

Both boys want to live with their father, a fashion-industry consultant. He now resides in New Jersey with his girlfriend of five years and her two kids.

"The last seven years have been hell," Jason said.

Linda Jacobs, reached on her cellphone, hung up when a reporter identified himself. She did not answer follow-up calls.

Additional reporting by Sam Smith

Sex-by-the-numbers Prenup Quashed

By Helen Peterson
New York Daily News
November 12, 2004

It was a prenuptial agreement even The Donald would envy.

Gail Koff, a co-founder of the Jacoby & Meyers law firm, signed a bizarre prenuptial pact that, among other things, stipulated "particular sex acts," even "specifying their frequency."

Sounds wacky?

A panel of judges, splitting 3 to 2, thought so.

The Appellate Division decision invalidated the October 1978 prenup, signed a week before Koff married Ralph Brill. The couple has since been embroiled in a nasty, four-year divorce fight in the courts.

Brill told the Daily News that the 20-page agreement covered many aspects of their lives, including children, residences, anniversary trips, sex and divorce.

He would not specify what the sex acts were or how often the couple engaged in them, but insisted they were not kinky.

"We put it in there because it is part of life," Brill said of the sex clause. "They are normal sexual things that husbands and wives do with each other, nothing strange."

The agreement also mandated the couple would live apart - he in the country, she in the city.

One of the more conventional aspects of the agreement dealt with divorce: It called for the couple to split the assets 50-50.

But the split panel agreed with a lower-court decision and awarded Koff 65% of the couple's assets.

"The evidence unquestionably establishes that the wife undertook the herculean combined roles of full-time lawyer, primary homemaker and primary parent of the three children, all with, at best, marginal help and support from their father," according to an Appellate Division decision written by Justice George Marlow.

Writing for the majority of the split panel, Marlow slammed Brill for cruel and inhuman treatment of Koff, saying there was "sufficient proof" of marital rape. He also cited instances where Brill wiretapped and monitored Koff's phone calls, yelled at her, demeaned her and berated her.

Brill denied he was cruel to his wife, or that he ever raped her. He also said he encouraged her to take a year off from work and move in with him.

Brill, who said he will appeal, still contends he's entitled to 50% of the couple's assets, including a piece of the law firm.

The only problem: The judges found that her law firm, as of April 2000, had debt exceeding $8 million and a valuation of zero. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond ordered Koff and Brill to split the debt.

"Everybody who hears about Jacoby & Meyers being worth zero laughs," Brill said.

The law firm pioneered the use of television commercials to promote itself.

Justice David Saxe, who wrote a 25-page dissent, found that the agreement was valid and said Brill could not be blamed for following it.

The judges also found no ethical violation by Diamond, the lower-court judge, who had been accused of bias toward Koff's attorney, Bernard Clair, because he made a $777 donation to her campaign and hired her former legal clerk.

(The following was not part of the above article but, is noted here as to what the dissent stated:

Judges Saxe and Gonzalez, in a 25 page dissent, said the following, which are precise
and exact excerpts from the decision;

"The majority writer employs lofty rhetoric concerning the wisdom of the Equitable Distribution Law. I agree that this Law wisely leaves open to the courts the determi-nation of exactly what manner of distribution is most equitable, considering all relevant facts, including the couple's respective contributions to the family as a whole. However, I believe that the majority is wrong in minimizing and ignoring the existence of the couple's agreed-upon approach to their marriage."

...-AND-...

"With this background in mind, I disagree with the highly skewed equitable distribution award directed by the trial court and approved by the majority here, in which the defendant-husband received just 35% of the marital assets, while being saddled with half the wife's enormous personal debt liability. In the parties' unique circumstances,
defendant's conduct does not warrant such a disproportionate, punitive award, especially when plaintiff's own serious financial improprieties are taken into account."

...-AND-...

"Finally, but perhaps most importantly, K (Gail Koff) committed financial misconduct of her own, and hers was more egregious than B's (Ralph Brill's), in that it was more extensive and farther-reaching. As a result of the decision not to pay millions of dollars in payroll taxes, in order to pay off other debts of the firm, K (and her partner) injured the firm's employees and had the effect of making the government an unwilling creditor of the firm. And, every deal she made with a state or municipal government to settle the firm's tax debt by making part payment placed an extra financial burden on other taxpayers." )

NY Partner's Hard-Fought Divorce Comes to a Messy Close

By Mark Fass
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
November 10, 2004

A split panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, has upheld embattled Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond's decision to award Jacoby & Meyers owner Gail Koff 65 percent of the marital assets in her contentious divorce.

The court offered its explicit support of the judge, who has been at the center of an ethical controversy regarding the case. Justice Diamond's 2000 reelection campaign received a $777 contribution from Ms. Koff's attorney, Bernard Clair. Mr. Clair had also hired the judge's former legal clerk, Jad Greifer, while arguing the case.

Ms. Koff's husband alleged that the contribution and hiring contributed to judicial bias.

"[T]he judge violated no controlling ethics opinion or rule," Justice George D. Marlow wrote for the panel, which split 3-2. "Moreover, not only does the credible evidence overwhelmingly support the results, but, indeed, in some respects, the court's economic determinations are generous to the husband," he said in K v. B, 2365-2365A.

Mr. Clair, a founding partner at Clair, Greifer, said in an interview that he views the decision as both "personal and professional vindication."

At the center of the appeal was a premarital agreement rife with unusual clauses that was signed by Ms. Koff and her ex-husband, Ralph Brill, the week before their October 1978 marriage. At the time, Ms. Koff worked as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom, and Mr. Brill was an architect and real estate broker.

The agreement provided for an equal division of marital property upon divorce.

Justice Diamond ruled the agreement invalid, and the appellate court agreed.

"Although the parties signed the 'agreement,' it was not acknowledged or proven in the manner required to entitle a deed to be recorded," wrote Justice Marlow. "Therefore, the agreement is unenforceable, and the trial court properly rejected it as evidence."

With the agreement thrown out, the court relied on the state Equitable Distribution Law, "designed so that the experience a couple endures and the contributions each spouse makes foretell the character of a marriage's end" to determine the financial allocation.

The court listed as salient categories financial contributions, "homemaking, raising children and providing the emotional and moral support necessary to sustain the other spouse in coping with the vicissitudes of life outside the home," citing Brennan v. Brennan, 103 A.D. 2d 48 (1984).

And because the "evidence is abundant that the wife contributed significantly in every single category and the husband hardly at all," the court upheld the lower court's 65 percent to 35 percent split in favor of Ms. Koff.

The premarital agreement codified the couple's lives to an unusual degree. Each spouse would maintain a separate residence  Ms. Koff in New York City, Mr. Brill in Putnam County. The agreement set forth a schedule for weekends together, in one or the other location, depending on the season.

Another provision promised "particular sex acts . . . specifying their frequency," according to the decision.

Cruel, Inhuman Treatment

The court upheld, among other holdings, the basis of the divorce, Justice Diamond's finding of cruel and inhuman treatment by Mr. Brill.

In his appeal, Mr. Brill argued that Ms. Koff "could not establish cruel and inhuman treatment as a ground for divorce since the parties did not cohabit."

The court, however, stated that in adducing whether cruel and inhuman treatment occurred, "the fact-finder should focus primary attention on the nature of the interaction between a husband and wife, rather than on the type of living arrangement."

The court found plenty of evidence supporting Ms. Koff's claim of cruelty, including "sufficient proof" that Mr. Brill committed marital rape multiple times.

He also tapped and recorded his wife's phone calls, "threatened to ruin the wife's business," "suggested to the wife that she was mentally unstable," "wrote a manipulative and intimidating letter to the wife's therapist" and "yelled at," "demeaned" and "berated" her, among other things, according to the court.

"These incidents, evincing a long-standing pattern of emotional neglect and abuse, are amply supported by the record and they well establish the wife's cause of action for cruel and inhuman treatment," wrote Justice Marlow.

Presiding Justice John T. Buckley and Justice Betty Weinberg Ellerin concurred with Justice Marlow.

The Dissent Pre nup

A 25-page dissent written by Justice David B. Saxe disputed the majority's central findings and "highly skewed equitable distribution award."

The pre-marital agreement was valid, Justice Saxe contended.

"Because the document pre-dated the Equitable Distribution Law, having been executed on October 2, 1978, the absence of the formalities specified by Domestic Relations Law Sec. 236(B)(3) does not invalidate it," he wrote, citing Bloomfield v. Bloomfield, 97 N.Y. 2d 188 (2001).

Furthermore, even if the court did not uphold the terms of the agreement, it should have relied on its probative value, Justice Saxe argued.

"The court should have taken into account, rather than rejecting out of hand, the established fact that the parties agreed to an 'unconventional' marriage in which the spouses would reside apart, even in the event they had children, and it should not have so severely punished defendant for conduct that both parties had defined as the foundation of the marriage," he wrote.

Justice Luis A. Gonzalez concurred with the dissent.

Mr. Clair, Ms. Koff's attorney, said that the litigation may not be over.

Using the name originally assigned to Mr. Brill by Justice Diamond to protect the anonymity of the parties, Mr. Clair said, "Mr. B, who apparently felt what I would consider overconfidence in his appeal, has not paid any child support for at least two years. One of the things that we will be considering is an immediate enforcement hearing."

Mr. Brill had been ordered to pay $1,450 per month to help support the couple's three children.

The attorney for Mr. Brill, Ronald Cohen, could not be located for comment by press time.

Justice Diamond also recently faced, but was cleared of, accusations of ethical violations in a case she heard involving Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp., a bank in which she owned stock. An Appellate Division, First Department, panel first ruled she should have recused herself, then reversed itself, holding that she did not have to.

http://www.nylawyer.com/news/04/11/111004a.html

Judge's $$ Offer in 'Ripoff'

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
October 31, 2004 pays millions ti institute

Embattled Manhattan Supreme Court judge Marylin Diamond has made a multimillion-dollar settlement offer to an Israeli research center that claims she and her ex-law partner ripped off millions it stood to inherit, sources close to the deal said.

Diamond made the offer last week even as she and ex-partner Janet Neschis were battling to get the center's 3-year-old lawsuit tossed out of Manhattan federal court. The center is "going away with quite a bit," said one source.

The renowned Weizmann Institute of Science claims in court papers that it was due to inherit about $8 million from wealthy art collector Natasha Gelman upon her death in 1998. But the institute claims it lost out after Diamond and Neschis got their hands on the elderly woman's vast fortune.

Gelman's film-producer husband, Jacques, amassed millions in the movie business, investments in Mexico, and artworks by modern masters. When he died in 1986, he left his fortune to his wife. It's unclear what happened to the various Gelman holdings, estimated to have been worth between $450 million and $2 billion when the widow died.

An Alzheimer's-addled Natasha Gelman rewrote the bylaws of one family foundation in 1992, cutting out Weizmann and others. The new bylaws of the $40 million Anturia Foundation named Diamond a 3 percent beneficiary — worth $1.2 million for the judge.

Institute lawyer Dr. Gad Kober refused to comment about the settlement offer. Calls to Diamond and her lawyer were not returned.

Judges Slap Back

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
September 13, 2004

An appeals court wants two lawyers to pay  literally  for representing a man who exposed judicial conflicts of interest.

The state Appellate Division has informed lawyers Tom Shanahan and David Cohen that it is "considering an imposition of sanctions against you for frivolous conduct in prosecuting [Anthony DeRosa's] appeal."

The sanctions threat  which gives both lawyers the right to defend themselves before they're slapped with possible fines or disciplinary action  was blasted by one of the court's own judges, Richard Andreas.

DeRosa  who discovered that several Manhattan jurists were ignoring a law requiring them to divulge any financial interest, "however small," in cases before them  called the threat "a clear abuse of judicial powers."

It's the latest in a string of bizarre and contradictory moves by the Appellate Division in the case  including establishing a new law making it harder for litigants to get an impartial judge.

DeRosa, a financial analyst, discovered that Judge Marylin Diamond had failed to disclose that she owned stock in JP Morgan Chase and bonds from Chase Bank before ruling against him in his suit against Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp.

DeRosa then appealed her decision that he lose his apartment. The Appellate Division agreed earlier this year and voided her ruling.

But instead of sending DeRosa's foreclosure case to another judge, the court did something it hadn't done since 1928: rule on the case itself. And the five-judge panel came to the same conclusion Diamond had.

The lone dissenter was Andrias, who asked the judges to reconsider. They reinstated all of Diamond's rulings, saying she may not have known JP Morgan Chase and Chase Manhattan Mortgage are related. The ruling did not mention her Chase bonds.

The decision said it's too "onerous a burden" for judges to know about companies they have holdings in, even though they submit that information to the state every year.

In another blistering dissent, Andrias argued the relationship between JPMorgan Chase and Chase Manhattan is "obvious" and Diamond has an obligation "to inform herself about her personal financial interests."

The issue won't come up in the future. The chief administrative judge changed the law last week to allow judges themselves to decide if they have a conflict.

                       Judges Get New Leeway on Stocks

By Greg B. Smith and Bob Port
New York Daily News
September 10, 2004

New York judges can hear cases involving companies in which they hold small amounts of stock, according to new rules issued yesterday.

Until now, state ethics rules said judges must disqualify themselves for owning any amount of stock, "however small," in businesses appearing before them.

Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, who handed down the new rules, also ordered new computer software installed to let judges screen incoming cases for conflicts of interest. Each judge would have to maintain a database of his or her stock portfolio.

"We feel that the old rule was out of step with modern reality," Lippman said. "Large numbers of our citizens have stock holdings, as do judges."

"What we tried to do was create a rule with a more common-sense approach," Lippman said. "It puts the burden on the judge to comply.

"Now, there are no excuses," the chief judge said.

The new rules let a judge overlook a financial conflict if it is "an insignificant interest that could not raise reasonable questions as to a judge's impartiality." The judge is trusted to interpret what is "insignificant."

The change was prompted in large part by a Daily News report in February that revealed 16 Manhattan justices had ruled in civil lawsuits without disclosing conflicts of interest.

Robert Tembeckjian, staff director of the Commission on Judicial Conduct, which disciplines judges, said the panel would apply the new rules to cases under investigation.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Helen Freedman, who sold her stock after The News articles appeared, cheered the new rule. "It's consistent with the economy that we live in," she said. "People own very tiny amounts of stock in very large corporations."

NY Judges See Rules on Stock Ownership Eased

By Daniel Wise
New York Lawyer
New York Law Journal
September 10, 2004

The Office of Court Administration yesterday relaxed a rule that had required judges to disqualify themselves whenever they own stock in companies involved in cases before them, "no matter how small" the amount.

Instead, the amended rule, issued by Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, requires judges to use their discretion and disqualify themselves if their stock interest is "more than de minimis."

Judge Lippman described the change as "a common sense approach designed to comport with the modern realities of stock ownership."

The new rule defines "de minimis" as "an insignificant interest that could not raise reasonable questions as to a judge's impartiality."

He announced that new voluntary procedures will be put in place in Manhattan Supreme Court, starting in October, which will allow judges to use a computer program to determine whether they have a potential conflict.

The amended rule, §§100.0(D) of the Rules of the Chief Administrator, uses the test for disqualification adopted in 1991 by the American Bar Association and by more than half the states since then. The federal courts have the stricter standard, requiring disqualification for any amount of stock.

The federal rule is tougher than either iteration of the New York rule because it does not permit the parties to consent to a judge's handling of a case despite stock ownership. Under both versions of New York's rule, a judge could continue to handle a lawsuit as long as the parties consented.

The old rule created problems for judges. The requirement of disclosure of even a single share of stock, coupled with the lack of an effective screening mechanism, led to lapses in required disclosures.

Ruling's a Gem for Diamond

By Bob Port
New York Daily News
August 27, 2004

Controversial Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond got a legal decision in her favor yesterday.

The Appellate Division reversed itself and said there was no need for her to step down from hearing a lawsuit that involved a subsidiary of a company in which she owns stock.

In March, the court declared that Diamond had a conflict of interest when she dismissed a 2001 challenge to a Chase Manhattan Mortgage Co. foreclosure.

Diamond should have disclosed that she and her husband owned stock in JPMorgan Chase & Co. and disqualified herself, the appeals panel said.

But yesterday, several judges changed their mind - without anyone asking them to.

They said that because Chase Manhattan Mortgage Co., which is entirely owned by JPMorgan Chase, is technically a different company with a different name, Diamond had no conflict of interest.

In a scathing six-page dissent, Judge Richard Andrias disagreed. "There is no doubt that Chase, in whatever guise, has a financial interest in this litigation," he said.

In 2003, the NYPD investigated Diamond on charges she penned threats to herself, but she was never charged. However, her around-the-clock security protection was dropped.

(To read appellate opinion click here.)

Case With Ethical Overtones for NY Judges Takes Bizarre Turn

By Tom Perrotta
New York Law Journal
New York Lawyer
August 27, 2004

A case at the center of a debate over judicial ethics took a bizarre turn yesterday, when an appeals court vacated one of its prior rulings that said a judge should have recused herself from a suit involving a bank in which she owned stock.

A divided panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, said that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond in fact did not have to disqualify herself, largely because the suit named Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. as a defendant, not JP Morgan Chase. Justice Diamond and her husband own stock in JP Morgan Chase.

The suit was brought by Anthony DeRosa, who sought to annul the sale of his Upper West Side apartment, which Chase Manhattan Mortgage foreclosed on and sold at auction. Mr. DeRosa has alleged defects in the notification process and claims he never received notice of the foreclosure. So far, courts have ruled against him.

In March, a majority panel of the First Department ruled that Justice Diamond should have disclosed her interest in JP Morgan Chase before accepting the suit. Though the court said the judge's error made her ruling against Mr. DeRosa null and void, it then took the rare step of deciding the case on its own -- against Mr. DeRosa.

He moved for reargument, and yesterday the same majority of four justices changed their minds. This time they found that Justice Diamond did not have to disqualify herself and affirmed her decision. The majority said that there was "no indication" that Justice Diamond "was aware of any affiliation between that company and JP Morgan Chase."

Given that the two companies were separate corporate entities, the appeals court said, Justice Diamond was not statutorily disqualified from the suit.

The court relied in part on an advisory ethics opinion, Judicial Ethics Op 04-17, from April 2004 (NYLJ May 10). The opinion said that judges should not bear the burden of investigating their interests in corporate entities that could be related to a party to a lawsuit.

The majority also faulted Mr. DeRosa for failing to make a motion for disqualification before Justice Diamond.

Dissenting Opinion

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Richard T. Andrias said Justice Diamond should have disclosed her interest and did not have the power to hear the suit. He wrote a similar dissent to the court's prior opinion.

"There is no doubt that Chase, in whatever guise, has a financial interest in this litigation, however small, and that Justice Diamond's undisputed ownership of JP Morgan Chase stock, of which we may take judicial notice, disqualified her pursuant to Judiciary Law §§14 and deprived her of jurisdiction, an issue that can be raised for the first time on appeal," Justice Andrias wrote.

He went on to criticize the majority's reliance on the advisory ethics opinion, which was written almost two years after Justice Diamond made her initial decision and five months after the appeals were argued.

He said the opinion was based on the Rules of the Chief Administrator, rather than Judiciary Law, and was non-binding. Its logic was "questionable," the judge said, and seemingly would not apply to a wholly owned subsidiary like Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp.

"Completely ignored by the majority is the obligation of a judge to 'inform' herself about her personal financial interests and to make a 'reasonable effort to keep informed' about the financial interests of her spouse . . . as well as the age-old stricture to avoid even an appearance of impartiality," Justice Andrias wrote. (See Canon 3[C][2] of the Code of Judicial Conduct; Rules of Chief Administrator, Judicial Conduct, §§ 100.3[E][2].)

Mr. DeRosa, responding to the ruling, said, "It's intellectually insulting to say that there is a difference between JP Morgan Chase and Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corporation."

His appellate attorney, Thomas D. Shanahan of Shanahan & Associates, said he was pleased that the appeals court had vacated its attempt to decide the case on its merits as a trial court, which he said set a bad precedent.

But he disagreed with the ruling over Justice Diamond's ethical obligations.

"If you were to take a survey on the street of a 100 people and ask whether JP Morgan Chase and Chase Manhattan Mortgage were related entities, all 100 would say yes," he said.

Jeffrey M. Eilender of Schlam Stone & Dolan, who represents the man who purchased Mr. DeRosa's apartment, said, "We view this as even more of a win than the prior opinion. Not only has the court again found on the merits that the foreclosure was proper, but it did so without the taint of the conflict of interest or disqualification."

He added: "I don't think anybody believes that [Justice Diamond] was biased because of these stock holdings."

'Terror Tactics'

In the last two years Mr. DeRosa has accused Justice Diamond and other judges of having conflicts of interest. He has been interviewed by the Commission on Judicial Conduct about Justice Diamond and says he has aided the FBI in an investigation into the judge. In another suit over his apartment, five Supreme Court justices recused themselves before a sixth judge finally took Mr. DeRosa's case [NYLJ Feb. 4, 2004].

Mr. Eilender has said that the tactics of Mr. DeRosa and his trial attorney, David B. Cohen, have intimidated the judiciary and caused judges to steer clear of their cases.

"I think everyone is familiar with the terror tactics employed by Mr. DeRosa and his counsel," he said. "Throughout this case, both Cohen and DeRosa have tried to intimidate the judiciary, and I believe the First Department was aware of it."

Mr. Shanahan, however, said, "Even unpopular litigants have a right to their day in court, and even unpopular litigants have a right to counsel."

He said he was troubled by the fact that the majority might be contemplating sanctions against Mr. DeRosa or Mr. Cohen, as suggested by Justice Andrias' dissent. Justice Andrias wrote that "there is no basis for sua sponte directing plaintiff and his counsel to show cause why a sanction should not be imposed upon them," even though the majority did not mention any sanctions in its opinion.

"When they talk about sanctions and hearings, that has a chilling effect on lawyers," Mr. Shanahan said. "I'm doing my job."

Mr. Eilender said that he too was confused by Justice Andrias' reference to sanctions.

"I don't get it," he said.

Justices Angela M. Mazzarelli, Betty Weinberg Ellerin, David Friedman and Luis A. Gonzalez were in the majority.

Rules for Judges May be Relaxed By  Greg B. Smith and Bob Port New York Daily News August 15, 2004

What do you do when your top judges are caught in dozens of potential ethics violations because they decided cases for businesses in which they owned stock? Rewrite the rules. That, at least, is the suggestion from the New York County Lawyers' Association and the Network of Bar Leaders, a group of local legal profession bigwigs. In recent weeks, both groups have proposed changes to New York's judicial ethics rules. Their advice comes after a Daily News report in February exposed 16 Manhattan justices for hearing civil lawsuits without disclosing personal conflicts of interest. A dozen of the judges ruled for companies in which the justice or his or her family owned stock. Others did not disclose connections to former law partners, expert witnesses or personal lawyers. For more than a century, New York's court system has required judges to disqualify themselves if the judge or his family has an "economic interest" in a party to a case - "however small" that interest might be. Local bar leaders want to strike those words "however small." They argue that exceptions should be made if the money at issue is insignificant. The judge with the potential conflict would make the call under the proposed rules. Lawyers could object or appeal if they disagree. "It's something we're looking at," said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the Office of Court Administration. "It is a changed economic environment from when the rules were originally written" because stock ownership is commonplace today, Bookstaver said.

Divorce Expert Eyed for Covering His Assets

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
June 27, 2004

An accountant tapped to help clean up the state's matrimonial courts is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly making crooked evaluations in cases before embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, The Post has learned.

Numbers cruncher John R. Johnson  whom Donna Hanover hired in her divorce from Rudy Giuliani  also failed to disclose to litigants his involvement in an Internet venture with other divorce experts, spurring conflict-of-interest complaints, documents show.

State Chief Judge Judith Kaye this month named Johnson to the Matrimonial Commission, a 27-member group charged with recommending reforms in divorce and custody proceedings.

The commission was formed following accusations of bias against purportedly neutral experts appointed to divorce cases.

The feds are looking into complaints about Johnson stemming from divorce squabbles in which he evaluated marital assets.

The cases in Diamond's court include the divorces of millionaire lawyer Gail Koff, head of the Jacoby & Meyers law firm, and fashion designer Cathy Hardwick.

Johnson determined that Jacoby & Meyers had zero net worth a finding that supported Diamond's ruling. She had ruled that Koff's husband, architect Ralph Brill, was responsible for half of the firm's $8 million debt from tax problems.

"I got socked," Brill said.

Johnson also said that Hardwick's name had no value. But Hardwick's ex-husband, Tom Snowdon, said that within months of Johnson's zero-value report on the designer's name, she went on QVC hawking her wares.

"There was a fix in, simple as that," said Snowdon.

He added: "My ex-wife was worth $4 million, and I've been left bankrupt."

Court spokesman David Bookstaver declined to comment, and Johnson could not be reached.

(All the people mentioned in the story are part of "The Alliance for
Judicial Justice" which is headed by Judicial Activist - Anthony DeRosa.
Their successful results as an organization are truly unprecedented.)

                        War over Boy Raised by Gays

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
May 30, 2004

An ugly tug of war is raging over the fate of a 6-year-old boy being raised by a gay couple who won custody of the child in a landmark decision in 2000.

Gays hailed the ruling as a major victory for same-sex couples, but the boy has since become a troubled kid who punches his teachers and repeatedly says he wants to kill
requested by his school.
HAPPIER DAYS: Three years after losing a
custody battle to gay dad Gerald Casale          The report has spurred the mother to fight for
 (left) and a partner, mom Courtney St.              increased access to her son, who has lived
Clemen (right) is fighting again for her baby    with the two men since the ruling - the  first
because he is grown violent at school.            time a New York court awarded custody                 
to a gay couple over a woman they claimed to be a surrogate.

The mother says she was never a surrogate and that she, the father - once a close friend who worked for her - and his live-in lover intended to raise the child as a parental trio.

"I just hadn't met the right guy yet," said Courtney St. Clement, 52, who had never been identified in the press or spoken out about her experiences.

"They held out that they had a lot of money, and at the time, I felt like I was marrying a doctor. They said, 'We're a family.' We were supposed to all live together, but we didn't get that far."

St. Clement, who runs her own marketing and consulting firm and lives on the Upper West Side, had no inkling of how badly things would go for her son, whose name is being withheld by The Post.

He punches and kicks his teachers, hits and bites himself, curses and says he wants to kill himself as often as twice a month, according to the new report, completed in January by NYU's Child Study Center.

It also says he repeatedly kisses and touches classmates inappropriately and once ran around naked.

"[He] is exhibiting significant behavioral problems at school," said the report, which was based on a personal evaluation of the boy by two experts, along with interviews with his teachers and both parents and their spouses.

It blames his unruliness in part on the "hostility" between his parents.

"His mother and father have always lived apart and have had remarkably significant disputes regarding custody and visitation from very early on," said the report, which recommended that the boy be appointed a law guardian.

He was previously kicked out of PS 116 as a kindergartner in 2002 after just two weeks there and placed in a private special-needs school on the Upper East Side.

St. Clement says the family arrangement broke down after the father, part-time substitute teacher Gerald Casale, 47, and his partner, a trusts and estates lawyer, Ernest Londa, 46, stopped her from seeing the 6-month-old infant in April 1998. She then sued for custody.

The partners claimed they struck a deal with St. Clement in which she agreed to carry Casale's child to term, then step back and allow them to be sole parents.

"I think Ms. Clement has a certain bent," said Phyllis Levitas, Casale's lawyer.

"My client and I have given this some very careful consideration, and we believe that it's not in the child's best interest to discuss this case with the media."

Last December, St. Clement challenged the custody ruling - made by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond - in light of the boy's disturbing behavior at school, and the boy's pediatrician requested a follow-up evaluation by a court-appointed specialist.

In March, an appeals court ruled that the new judge in the case, Supreme Court Justice Joan Lobis, reconsider the custody question.

But Lobis refused to take up the custody issue, denied the evaluation request and rejected the recommendation for a child guardian, spurring a motion in which the mother slammed Lobis for "abdicating her role as judge."

Lobis' office did not respond to The Post's request for comment.

The mother is part of the Alliance for Judicial Justice, a group of 200 litigants who suspect their cases were tainted by judges' personal interests, led by activist Anthony DeRosa.

Law Giant and Judge Are in Cahoots: Lawsuit

By Brad Hamilton
The New York Post
May 2, 2004

A former Columbia University professor who now publishes the oldest newspaper in Puerto Rico claims a powerful Manhattan law firm bilked him for $170,000 in bogus legal fees - then got a ruling allowing the tab from a judge with ties to the firm.

Gerard Angulo, publisher of The San Juan Star, filed a federal malpractice suit against Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, seeking $1.2 million in damages.

He says the firm ripped him off with trumped-up bills following a 1996 civil case that he won.

Last year, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Angulo could conduct discovery in his bid to show the firm had no record of the work it claimed it had done.

But then Skadden refiled the case in Manhattan Supreme Court, and it was assigned to Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, who awarded Skadden Arps $800,000 plus interest in a summary judgment in November, despite Angulo's protests over her connections to the firm.

Two of the judge's friends, Helene Kaplan and Sheila Birnbaum, are senior attorneys at Skadden Arps - the largest and most profitable legal firm in the city, according to figures it supplied to the New York Law Journal.

Kornreich is also co-president of a charity, Judges and Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert, that holds its monthly meetings at the firm's Midtown offices. Birnbaum is a past president.

The publisher said he asked Kornreich to recuse herself, but "she said she didn't feel she was conflicted," he said.

Under state law, "a judge is disqualified whenever the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

Angulo, a former business prof at Columbia and NYU, has paid Skadden Arps more than $1 million, but owes an additional $1.2 million following Kornreich's ruling.

"Skadden fought like cats and dogs to get it moved from federal court to state court, because in federal court, you have automatic discovery," he said.

The judge did recuse herself in another case involving Skadden Arps in January after The Post reported that the FBI was investigating charges she and two other Manhattan judges doled out judicial favors to friends and associates.

Angulo was interviewed by an FBI agent working on the case.

Skadden Arps is by far the largest private firm in New York, with 873 attorneys at its Times Square headquarters.

Kornreich and Skadden Arps did not return calls seeking comment.

http://www.nypost.com/cgi-bin/printfriendly.pl

"Anthony DeRosa's legal battle against JP Morgan/Chase, was decided in front of both Judge Marylin Diamond and Judge Shirley Kornreich. Helen Kaplan from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Megan and Flom, sits on the Board of Directors to JP Morgan/Chase, and lucrative legal work for JPMorgan/Chase is undertaken by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Megan and Flom"]
 

Shake-up at Judicial Watchdog

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
April 18, 2004
30 complaints
The panel that disciplines state judges has undergone a shake-up, with top members being replaced amid charges the watchdog has missed the boat on judicial scandals.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct, which dismissed 30 complaints against embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Marylin Diamond, has a new chairman and vice chair, along with three new members and three staff attorneys.

New member Richard Emery, a noted civil rights lawyer, said he may push the panel to take a tougher approach.

"If I feel like the CJC is focusing on the wrong things, I'm certainly going to let that be known," said Emery. "It's important to uphold the integrity of the system, and there have been examples where that's not been the case."

The commission itself has been pushing for reforms in recent weeks, looking to add three additional lawyers and take on a more investigative role, CJC sources said.

Veteran white-collar defense lawyer Lawrence Goldman, former head of the New York Criminal Bar Association, has been appointed chairman, taking over from Henry Berger.

Upstate town justice Frances Ciardullo is the new vice chair.

Raoul Felder, the high-profile attorney who has been sharply critical of certain judges, has also been added to the 11-person panel, along with businesswoman Colleen DiPirro, who was appointed by Gov. Pataki on Thursday.

The CJC has drawn fire recently for dismissing complaints about Diamond, the target of an FBI probe over alleged conflicts of interest and other matters, and for not acting against Brooklyn judge Gerald Garson, who has been charged with taking bribes to fix divorce cases.

Ammon Judge in a Co-author 'Conflict'

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
April 18, 2004

The judge who's been asked to approve millions in legal fees from the estate of slain financier Ted Ammon has co-authored a book with a lawyer whose firm wants the big payout, The Post has learned.

Surrogate Court Judge Eve Preminger has not disclosed her close ties with bank lawyer Susan Frunzi, a lawyer with Schulte, Roth & Zabel, the white-shoe firm that has billed the estate $3.8 million for 19 months of work.

Preminger and Frunzi are co-authors of "Trusts and Estates EVE PREMINGER                   Practice in New York," a $240 manual put out by
Ruling may aid writer's firm.     Minnesota legal publisher West Thompson every year
                                    since 1997.

Frunzi's firm represents co-executor JPMorgan Chase, which filed an estate accounting with the court last month requesting Preminger's thumbs-up on a whopping $6.8 million in lawyer fees, bank commissions and other expenses.

Frunzi handled key aspects of the Ammon estate. Preminger and Frunzi did not return calls for comment.

JPMorgan Chase's accounting was officially challenged Friday by lawyers for Danny Pelosi, the electrician who's been charged in Ammon's death and who married Ammon's widow, Generosa, three months after the mogul was slain in 2001.

Meanwhile, Preminger, who also happens to be a stockholder in Chase, faces another controversy.

The appellate Division is weighing an allegation that she's allowed another multi-million-dollar estate to languish for 16 years while approving costly expenses.

Los Angeles silk-flower heiress Adrienne Lefkowitz contends that Preminger let the Bank of New York unfairly keep control of the money for years while signing-off on more than $2 million in fees.

Preminger is a stockholder in the bank, according to her financial disclosure forms, but did not recuse herself when Lefkowitz protested.

Pelosi's lawyers and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will now examine the payouts.

[Ted Ammon's divorce was in front of embattled New York Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, who is also a shareholder in JP Morgan Chase.]

$6.8m Bite on Ammon Estate

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
April 11, 2004

Two and a half years after financier Ted Ammon was found bludgeoned to death in his East Hampton home, his estate is being pummeled by legal fees and other costs, court records show.

More than $6.8 million of a $55 million estate has been drained by the mounting bills - $4.8 million for lawyers, $1 million for accountants and another $1 million in bank fees, according to JP Morgan Chase Bank, co-executor of his estate.

The bank, which filed a comprehensive accounting March 17, is itself a major beneficiary, an analysis by The Post found.

It's billed the estate for $911,182.03 in commissions and has transferred millions in Ammon assets into its own money-market funds.

Chase also approved a jaw-dropping $3,844,089.10 for bank lawyers Schulte Roth & Zabel, despite the estate facing only one modest legal challenge.

The bulk of the Schulte bills - $3.6 million - covers 17 months of work through last July.

That works out to $213,632 per month for the firm, or $9,710 per weekday, the equivalent of three full-time attorneys at $400 per hour working every day since February 2002.

To what use was the money put?

"I would love to know that answer," said Edward Burke Jr., a lawyer for Danny Pelosi, the electrician who married Ammon's late widow, Generosa, and has been charged with killing the millionaire business whiz.

Pelosi's legal team is expected to challenge the accounting in Surrogate Court, but they have only until next Friday to do so.

Ammon's adopted 14-year-old twins, Grego and Alexa, don't have a lawyer to represent them in the matter.

Their court-assigned guardian, Arza Feldman, handles only the custody fight involving nanny Kathryn Ann Mayne and Ammon's sister, Sandi Williams.

Feldman did not return calls seeking comment.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Pelosi and any other interested parties, including Mayne and the two lawyers who represent the estate of Generosa Ammon, could ask Surrogate Court Judge Eve Preminger to step aside.

Preminger has presided over key aspects of the case despite being a stockholder in JP Morgan Chase, records show.

She has not revealed her ties to the bank, which include owning securities in both JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Chase Manhattan Bank, her 2001 and 2002 financial-disclosure forms show.

The Ammon accounting shows Chase has been busy selling off the mogul's assets - everything from a 2001 Aston Martin Vantage Volante ($100,000) to his two sailboats ($4,000).

Other liquidated assets range from Ammon's $9.4 million Fifth Avenue pad to his various business holdings, to the $6.53 subscription refund his estate got back from BusinessWeek magazine.

A bank spokeswoman declined comment, citing client confidentiality.

[Ted Ammon's divorce was in front of embattled New York Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, who is also a shareholder in JP Morgan Chase.]

Court Tosses Judge's Rulings

Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
March 24, 2004

A state appeals court yesterday tossed all of embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond's rulings in a civil case involving JPMorgan Chase, finding she failed to disclose her financial ties to the banking giant.

"Justice Diamond should have recused herself from the case, or else at a minimum, disclosed her interest to the parties in order to give them an opportunity to waive her disqualification," the Appellate Division ruling says. "Because Justice Diamond failed to follow this course . . . the orders appealed are null and void."

The case involved a suit by Anthony DeRosa, who uncovered Diamond's ties to the bank - including stock ownership - after she ruled

                  Court Cuts into Diamond, Cites Conflict

By Helen Peterson
New York Daily News
March 24, 2004

A Manhattan judge already under fire for alleged ethics violations was
cited yesterday for conflict of interest by a state appeals court.

The Appellate Division found that state Supreme Court Justice Marylin
Diamond wrongly withheld information about her stock holdings in a suit
she presided over.

The court voided Diamond's orders in a foreclosure dispute between co-op
owner Anthony DeRosa and JPMorgan Chase because the judge never told the
parties she owned JPMorgan Chase stock and did not recuse herself.

State judges are supposed to disclose stock ownership in such cases to
avoid conflict. How much stock Diamond held is unclear because that
information is confidential by law.

The decision was more bad news for Diamond, who is under investigation by
the state Commission on Judicial Conduct for allegedly failing to disclose similar conflicts in other cases.
19 cases self interest
The Daily News reported last month that on 19 occasions since 2000,
Diamond heard civil cases while she or her husband owned stock in one
party - but never disclosed their financial stake to the other side.

The appeals court did not fault Diamond's legal findings. After tossing
her rulings, the panel took up the case and found - as Diamond had - that
JPMorgan Chase properly foreclosed on DeRosa after he defaulted on the
mortgage.

           Panel Says Judge Should Have Disclosed Conflict

Tom Perrotta
New York Law Journal
March 24, 2004

An appeals court yesterday invalidated a ruling on a contested foreclosure by Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, saying she should have disclosed that she owned stock in a bank that was party to the litigation.

The Appellate Division, First Department, found that the judge was obligated under Judiciary Law §§14 to reveal any potential conflict of interest for the benefit of both parties.

The ruling arose from a foreclosure contested by Anthony DeRosa, a Manhattan litigant who has accused Justice Diamond and other judges of having conflicts of interest. Mr. DeRosa has been interviewed about Justice Diamond by the Commission on Judicial Conduct and says he has cooperated with an FBI investigation into the judge.

"Justice Diamond should have recused herself from the case, or else, at a minimum, disclosed her interest to the parties in order to give them an opportunity to waive her disqualification," the court wrote in DeRosa v. JP Morgan Chase, 1918. "Because Justice Diamond failed to follow this course, she was without power to hear the case, and the orders appealed are null and void."

Rather than sending the case back for a new trial judge, however, the appeals court took the rare step of examining the record and deciding the case on its own. It reached the same conclusion that Justice Diamond had.

In a dissent, Justice Richard T. Andrias agreed that Justice Diamond had a conflict but said the majority's decision to rule on the case de novo was "unprecedented" and uncalled for in such a "garden variety" case. The case, Justice Andrias said, should have been returned to the Supreme Court for reassignment.

Richard Godosky of Godosky & Gentile, who represents Justice Diamond, said, "The judge is very gratified that the Appellate Division affirmed her findings and apologizes for not being aware of the rule concerning the ownership of shares in JP Morgan Chase, although it was a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase that was a party in this case, JP Morgan Chase Mortgage Corporation."

Under New York case law, the Commission on Judicial Conduct can adopt the findings of appellate courts in disciplinary proceedings against judges.

The 4-1 ruling is the latest chapter in the courthouse drama of Mr. DeRosa, a litigant who has garnered considerable press through his accusations against Manhattan judges while fighting for an Upper West Side apartment he claims was foreclosed on without proper notice. In another suit involving Mr. DeRosa's apartment, five Supreme Court justices recused themselves from his case before a judge agreed to take it (NYLJ Feb. 4, 2004).

JP Morgan Chase foreclosed on Mr. DeRosa's apartment after he lost his job and stopped paying his mortgage. The bank sold the apartment at auction in March 2001. Mr. DeRosa contested the sale in court, arguing that he was never notified of the auction. He claimed he had the money to pay his mortgage.

Justice Diamond dismissed Mr. DeRosa's complaint but did not reveal that she and her husband owned stock in Chase. After Mr. DeRosa searched Justice Diamond's financial disclosure statements for 2001 and 2002, he began to argue that the judge should not have presided over the case.

De Novo Ruling

Yesterday the First Department agreed, citing Matter of Harkness Apt. Owners Corp. v. Abdus-Salaam, 232 AD2d 309 (1996). However, the majority also said that since it was being asked to consider a pure question of law that could be answered on the full record of Justice Diamond's proceeding, it would decide the merits of the case.

The court found that Chase did attempt to send notice to Mr. DeRosa, though his apartment was misnumbered and his ZIP code incorrect. They also noted that notice of the sale was published in Newsday.

They dismissed the argument that the Newsday notice was invalid because it printed the wrong year of the sale ? 2000 rather than 2001 ? saying the error would have been apparent on its face. The court added that Mr. DeRosa should have anticipated a foreclosure, since he did not pay his mortgage for six months.

In his dissent, Justice Andrias said the majority was breaking with the court's traditional role by deciding the case on its own. He said he could find only one case, in 1928, in which the First Department took original jurisdiction, and that case presented extraordinary circumstances: ambulance chasing and the local bar association's power to investigate and discipline attorneys for it.

"To act as the nisi prius court and decide this motion as if it came directly to us is unprecedented," Justice Andrias wrote. "It would, in effect, deprive any party aggrieved by our decision of an additional layer of appeal, and sets an unfortunate precedent."

The majority responded that it would serve "no constructive purpose" to follow Justice Andrias' suggestion.

David B. Cohen, Mr. DeRosa's attorney, responded angrily to the de novo ruling and said he would seek an appeal.

"It's just bad judging," Mr. Cohen said. "This appellate court is really all wet on this case."

Jeffrey M. Eilender of Schlam Stone & Dolan, who represents the purchaser of Mr. DeRosa's apartment, said he was pleased that the First Department decided to step in and decide the case.

"This is a routine mortgage case, but it became a circus," Mr. Eilender said. "I'm really happy that the First Department put its foot down and decided to end it."

Justices Angela M. Mazzarelli, Betty Weinberg Ellerin, David Friedman and Luis A. Gonzalez concurred on the majority.

[To read the DeRosa decision of the New York Appellate Court, First Department click here. To read DeRosa's motion for rehearing to the New York Appellate Court, First Department click here and to read his application for review by the New York Court of Appeals click here.]

                              Accuser Rough on Diamond

Brad Hamilton
New York Post
March 21, 2004

-- The man whose case is at the center of a federal probe of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond told the state panel in charge of disciplining jurists that the judge is a liar, The Post has learned.

Jerry Jung, 56, said he told the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct this week that Diamond lied when she wrote to a top state judge that she was "like a daughter" to his multimillionaire art collector cousin Natasha Gelman, who
died in 1998.
JUDGE DIAMOND
Conduct under question        Just how well she knew Gelman is a focus of the panel's probe into whether Diamond misled chief administrative Justice Jonathan Lippman when she asked his permission to serve as co-trustee of Gelman's charitable trust.

"There was no relationship at all, only a business relationship; she was the attorney," Jung told the commission.

He alleges that Diamond and her former law partner, Janet Neschis, used their positions to loot Gelman's estate - once worth more than $1 billion, he estimates - by forging his cousin's signature on a trust document.

Jung is currently suing both women in Manhattan federal court, and sources said the FBI is investigating both Diamond and Neschis.

The two did not return calls.

[For more information on the Jacques and Natasha Gelman art collectors go to: http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.05.23/arts3.html ]


     Judicial Conduct Commission Seeks Recording of Hearing

By Daniel Wise
New York Law Journal
Friday, February 27, 2004

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct has started a highly unusual
proceeding to compel a complainant who tape recorded a session with one of its lawyers to turn over the tape and any transcripts he made of it.

Anthony DeRosa, who has made numerous complaints against judges, disclosed yesterday that when he appeared before the commission Wednesday pursuant to subpoena, he had contested the commission's jurisdiction over him as a lay person.

The commission's administrator, Robert H. Tembjeckian, said that the commission was not seeking to either punish or muzzle Mr. DeRosa, but instead was acting "to protect the integrity and confidentiality of the commission's proceedings."

The event that prompted the commission to subpoena Mr. DeRosa was the
disclosure in a New York Post article, dated Jan. 18, that a "transcript" had been prepared of a session that Mr. DeRosa and one his lawyers held with a commission attorney.

The "surreptitious" making of the tape and the dissemination of it to the press is "contrary to the plain meaning of the judiciary law," Mr.Tembjeckian said. He was referring to Judiciary Law §§45, which makes all "commission proceedings and transcripts thereof" confidential.

Mr. DeRosa said yesterday that when he appeared before the commission on
Wednesday, he claimed the Judiciary Law applied only to the commission and its staff and was not binding upon him as a complainant and a layperson.

Mr. DeRosa also released a statement yesterday that he read to the commission at the outset of his Wednesday appearance. In his statement, he defended his taping of the session with the commission lawyer as "purely a defensive measure in protecting myself and my rights."

Mr. DeRosa also asserted that the lawyer who appeared with him at the Jan. 6 session had no knowledge that it was being taped. He also said that he does not have possession of any tapes of the meeting or transcripts made from them.

Mr. DeRosa, who heads a group of litigants who claim they have been unfairly treated in their matrimonial cases, has been cited in numerous news stories as having filed complaints against several judges with the conduct commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

One of those complaints named Acting Justice Marylin G. Diamond, who handled a case brought by Mr. DeRosa to regain his apartment after it hadbeen foreclosed and sold at auction. Justice Diamond ruled against Mr. DeRosa, but he appealed claiming that she should have recused herself because she owned stock in J.P. Morgan Chase, which had brought the foreclosure proceeding.

Through her law secretary, Justice Diamond said yesterday she could not comment on a pending case.

Mr. DeRosa, who continued to reside in the apartment despite the foreclosure, raised a similar conflict claim against a second judge when the new owner sued for maintenance that had accrued on the apartment and was owed to the West Side cooperative building.

Mr. DeRosa claimed that the judge in second case, Acting Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, also owned stock in J.P. Morgan Chase. After a news story was published in the New York Post asserting that Judge Kornreich was a the subject of an FBI inquiry, she "reluctantly" recused herself citing the need to "avoid the appearance of prejudice against Mr. DeRosa" given the Post article, according to a brief decision she issued in, Pesochinsky v. DeRosa, 126043/02.

                        Lawyers Say Do it like Feds Do
        Urging State to Screen Cases for Judicial Conflicts

By Greg B. Smith and Bob Port
Daily News Staff Writers
February 11, 2004

A clean fight with a fair referee - that's what most citizens want when they go to civil court.

But in Manhattan's state court, the Daily News found, conflicts of interest can create the appearance that the game is rigged.

Dollar figures on public financial disclosures for New York judges are kept secret by law. The entanglements of lawyers remain mysterious. And no one automatically screens cases for conflicts of interest.

In previous articles this week, the Daily News reported that 16 of 47 Manhattan judges who hear commercial civil disputes had not disclosed a potential conflict.

The "Queen of Conflicts," Justice Marylin Diamond, has heard 19 civil cases since 2000 without disclosing that she or her husband owned stock in one of the parties before her. Diamond's former law partner also awarded her $1.1 million to co-manage a trust.

"It's just wrong that a judge has an interest in one of the parties and doesn't disclose it," said Jeffrey Sunshine, a Long Island lawyer. He didn't know, for example, that Manhattan Judge Karla Moskowitz owned stock in General Electric when he sued a GE subsidiary in 2001.

"I've always wished," Sunshine said, "someone could do something about it."

He and several attorneys said New York courts should do what federal courts do - scan each case before it is assigned to a judge to avoid obvious conflicts.

Unlike state courts, in federal court, the rough values of a judge's stock or other interests are public, so lawyers can easily check. And lawyers must catalogue business ties for clients with each case filed, so each judge can check.

Brooklyn Federal Court beefed up its computer system to snag potential conflicts.

Two years ago, the court installed software that compares judges' financial interests with cases they get by random assignment. A clerk enters stock and other information into the computer. If that company comes in as a party, the computer red-flags the case and sends it to another judge.

Douglas Palmer, the court's computer chief, said the electronic safety net did not work flawlessly at first. It missed one conflict because the company the judge owned stock in was entered differently from the way the company name appeared on the lawsuit.

"We didn't have a very good working system," Palmer said, making clear that now "in my opinion, it's working very well. They've adapted our system and it's being sent out nationwide."

Moskowitz has asked court administrators for computer help in screening conflicts of interest.

Officials began exploring the idea more than a year ago, but they have doubts about the software. The massive volume of cases - tens of thousands filed each month - makes data entry an expensive proposition.

"It's no panacea," said Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman.

Lippman considers conflict of interest a problem, but not the biggest problem facing courts. The dozens of conflicts The News found in court records represent less than one half of 1% of all cases filed, he said.

"It's such a small, tiny percentage," Lippman said.

And while Lippman and other legal experts said judges should err on the side of caution when a question of conflict arises, they said that many times the question is fuzzy.

The News found several Manhattan judges who did not know what their own ethics rules say.

According to those rules, "a judge shall disqualify himself or herself" when "the judge knows that he or she ... or the judge's spouse ... has an economic interest ... in a party" to a case.

"Shall means shall," said Bob Keating, a former Supreme Court justice and adviser to Mayor Ed Koch, now dean of the state's judge school in White Plains.

"There's not much room for interpretation."

Avoiding conflicts on the bench is critical, Keating said. "It's important as much for the perception of justice as for the reality - maybe more for just the perception."

State rules also say judges must disqualify themselves when a lawyer appearing before them acted as their lawyer or a family member's lawyer within the past two years - or when a lawyer was a colleague in a judge's old law firm.

A judge "shall keep informed" about his or her family, and "however small" the money at stake may be, conflict of interest still matters, the rules say.

A judge can hear a case, despite a conflict, by disclosing his or her interests to all sides. If the parties agree, the judge stays. That agreement, the rules say, "shall be incorporated in the record."

One problem The News found may defy any solution.

In three recent multimillion-dollar asbestos lawsuits, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paula Omansky agreed to seal the cases in the interest of corporate confidentiality, despite her conflict of interest.

The judge owned shares of 3M and Pfizer, two defendants, and her husband owned shares of Allstate, another defendant. "I disclosed to all parties," Omansky said. "There were no motions for recusal."

                           She's the Queen of Conflicts

By Greg B. Smith and Bob Port
New York Daily News
February 10, 2004

Justice Marylin Diamond is hands down Manhattan Supreme Court's queen of courtroom conflicts.

She appointed her former law partner and close friend to handle a sick man's legal affairs. That same friend oversaw a trust that later awarded Diamond $1.1 million.

She hired an engineer who was a witness in a case she heard to work on her apartment building, not disclosing her actions until after she had ruled in favor of the party that had called the engineer.

And 19 times since 2000, she has heard civil cases while she or her husband owned stock in one party - without disclosing her financial ties to the opposing side.

Diamond refused repeated requests from the Daily News for an interview and did not respond to written questions.

"I think Judge Diamond is absolutely corrupt," said David Cohen, a former assistant U.S. attorney and practicing lawyer in New York for 40 years who represents several clients challenging Diamond in court.

For more than a decade, Diamond rarely disqualified herself from any case. But as her behavior attracted media and FBI attention last year, she began to recuse herself, without explanation, in many cases.

The FBI is looking into whether Diamond used her judgeship to benefit herself. The NYPD looked into whether she wrote herself threatening letters, which triggered round-the-clock security for her.

One of Manhattan's few Republican judges, Diamond, 63, left a lucrative practice in estate law to win election to Civil Court in 1990. She was appointed an acting Supreme Court justice in 1994, and reelected to Civil Court in 2001.

She owns real estate worth millions and maintains a stock portfolio with holdings in 40 companies. And she is co-trustee of a $33 million charitable trust.

Her connection to the trust predates her judgeship. As a lawyer, she prepared the wills of Jacques and Natasha Gelman, two wealthy art collectors. But when she took the bench in 1991, Diamond stepped down as a Gelman family lawyer, since judges cannot practice law.

She handed the job to her former partner, Janet Neschis.

In November 1997, when a widowed Natasha Gelman was allegedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease, she named ­Neschis and Diamond co-trustees of the Gelman trust.

Six months later, Gelman died.

When stunned relatives protested, Diamond claimed under oath that the ailing Gelman had called her to her upper East Side apartment "in 1992 or 1993" and stated her intentions that the judge be a trustee.

During that meeting, the judge claimed Gelman also declared her wish that Diamond receive $1.1 million to help manage the trust.

State law forbids a judge from managing a trust unless the judge is a relative or close personal friend - and then, only with permission from judicial authorities.

Eighteen days after Gelman's death, Neschis went to Manhattan Surrogate's Court and formally registered Diamond as a co-trustee.

Diamond then asked Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman for his okay, claiming in a July 1998 letter that she had been "like a daughter" to Gelman. She didn't mention she stood to gain $1.1 million as a co-trustee.

And she didn't let on, court records show, that she had not seen Gelman for two or three years before the woman's death. Lippman granted her request. He declined to comment.

Months later, Diamond rewarded her old friend Neschis.

In October 1998, she appointed Neschis to be an attorney for the $635,000 estate of an incapacitated Manhattan man, Henry Gray. Neschis collected thousands in legal fees from Gray's estate, with Diamond's approval.

Informed of Neschis' relationship to ­Diamond, Brian Heitner, an attorney hired by Gray's niece and guardian, told the News: "If I had known at that time she [Neschis] was a former law partner, I would have raised an issue over it."

In the summer of 2001, Neschis directed the Gelman trust to pay Diamond $1.1 million.

$20 millionlawsuit-engineer

After a structural engineer named Dov Kaminetsky surfaced as an expert witness in a 2001 lawsuit before her, Diamond hired him to fix a sagging wall at a luxury apartment building she owns.

The suit was brought by Seward Park, a lower East Side housing complex, seeking to collect $20 million for a roof collapse from its insurer, Greater New York Mutual.

Kaminetsky was Seward Park's star witness.

Weeks after she hired Kaminetsky, ­Diamond ruled in favor of his client on Feb. 14, 2003. Word of that hiring reached the lawyers, who confronted Diamond in her chambers.

Her reaction?

"There is no mandatory recusal when the judge knows the expert," she said. The lawyers backed off when Kaminetsky assured them he had stopped working for Diamond.

Insurance company lawyers asked to reargue their case, but were shocked to learn the engineer was working for ­Diamond again. The judge finally recused herself from the case after rejecting all new arguments.

In at least 19 cases, Diamond or her husband owned stock in companies involved in litigation assigned to her court. Among them were AT&T, Cablevision, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, General Electric, Primedia, Travelers and Verizon.

In some cases, Diamond never had to make a ruling or the cases were thrown out of court.

But when Diamond took action from the bench, her rulings consistently favored the companies she had invested in.

In March 2002, Time Warner sued a company called Sunseeker Contract to collect a debt. Diamond got the case in July 2002 but did not disclose that she owned Time Warner stock.

Last February, the judge abruptly recused herself from the case without explanation.

Sue Eng and her family sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. for allowing a nursing attendant to withdraw about $500,000 from an account belonging to their late father, an Alzheimer's sufferer.

The judge kept mum about her Chase stock.

David Jaros, the family's attorney, declined to criticize Diamond, who rejected the family's claim and ordered the case to Surrogate's Court.

Diamond kept quiet on another matter. Chase had a contract for legal representation with her husband's law firm. "I didn't know that," Jaros said.

In 2001, another judge ordered a West Village shop owner to pay Chase a $27,000 debt.

When the shop owner failed to show up at a hearing about how Chase would recover its money, Diamond declared the woman in contempt, fined her $260 and ordered her arrested - without disclosing her Chase stock ownership or her husband's legal relationship with the bank.

Next: Reforming the System

                            Tossed Case Hit Firefighter Where It Hurt

By Greg B. Smith and Bob Port
New York Daily News
February 10, 2004

Firefighter

In 1997, Firefighter John Driscoll was seriously hurt in an apartment building on E. 63rd St. As black smoke choked the stairwell, a hose jerked in his hands. He tumbled headfirst down the staircase.

For weeks, herniated discs in his neck kept him in a hospital. He endured five surgeries and was forced to retire from the FDNY.

Driscoll, 48, sued the building's managers, Tower Associates, alleging there were no smoke detectors and that managers delayed 15 minutes before calling 911.

The case went before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond.

No one told Driscoll that Tower's law firm also personally represented Diamond in another courtroom. Diamond, who dismissed Driscoll's personal injury lawsuit, never disclosed it.

"I don't think anybody was aware of it," Driscoll said. "It's a conflict of interest, and if my lawyers can find a way to reverse it, I'm sure they will."

Judges cannot rule on cases in which their own lawyers represent one side.

A June 1999 ethics opinion states: "A judge must exercise recusal where an attorney who represented the judge and members of the judge's family appears before the judge within two years of the representation."

Under New York law, a building owner is liable for firefighter injuries if they arise from a violation of city rules.

Driscoll's lawyers, the firm of Barasch, McGarry, Salzman, Penson & Lim, made that argument to Diamond. The firm of Gould & Cimino, representing Tower, claimed smoke had nothing to do with Driscoll's injuries.

Gould & Cimino also represented 920 Park Ave., a luxury high-rise owned by Diamond and her family. The building was sued in 1999 and settled in April 2002.

In March 2002, Diamond dismissed Driscoll's case. Driscoll asked her to reconsider. She refused.

"My whole life changed," Driscoll said. "I don't sleep through the night. I can't lift weight. I'm not as athletic as I used to be. I can't hold a job, because employers need you to sit or stand for a prolonged period of time."

His lawyer, James McGarry, has appealed.

"We're going to put this conflict-of-interest issue out there," he said.

In fact, as Gould & Cimino represented Diamond's Park Avenue building, the firm appeared before Diamond in six other cases as well, records show.

In August 2003, Diamond suddenly recused herself from one of those cases. Lawyers say she never gave a reason. Diamond refused repeated requests for comment.

Judges Keep Quiet about Conflicts

by Greg B. Smith and Bob Port
New York Daily News
February 7, 2004

One-third of state Supreme Court justices who hear Manhattan's big-money civil lawsuits have failed to disclose their personal conflicts of interest in recent
cases, a Daily News investigation has found.

A dozen judges ruled in favor of companies in which    they, or their families, owned stock.                                The Supreme Court
                                                                                                                  Building in Manhattan

Others did not disclose connections to former law partners, expert witnesses, or their own personal lawyers appearing
before them - all possible violations of state law and
judicial ethics.

The News findings are based on financial disclosures from
2000 through 2002 for New York County judges compared with computer records for all 46,826 civil cases they heard.

The News tracked down parties in 101 cases to confirm
that 16 out of 47 judges who hear commercial civil                Justice Herman Kahn
disputes had not disclosed a potential conflict.

 Told what The News had learned, state Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman said jurists are obligated to avoid anything that might cast doubt on their impartiality.

But he said, "Despite their huge case-loads, judges in New
York County are overwhelmingly adhering to among the
 most stringent ethics rules in the country."

Informed that a judge's personal interest could have tainted
 their case, most lawyers shied away from denouncing the
judges involved. But a few were shocked.                            Justice Carla Moskowitz

 "Aren't we assuming that the people making these decisions
are totally unbiased?" asked lawyer Daniel Solin, who filed
suit against the Salomon Smith Barney brokerage before
Justice Herman Cahn.

"That's what we assume - that's the foundation of our judicial system," said Solin.

Cahn maintained a Salomon Smith Barney margin loan while
ruling in three lawsuits involving their firm.
.                                                                                           Justice Helen Freedman
In a 2002 case, he rejected a suit filed by Solin on behalf
of a 60-year-old Manhattan woman, who charged Salomon
misled her into investing $75,000 in Worldcom just as its
value plummeted in an accounting scandal.

Cahn ordered her to take her claim to arbitration, which Solin argued was biased in favor of Wall Street firms. He charged that the arbitration clause in the investment contract had been breached.

Cahn never mentioned his margin loan account, which enables him to borrow $60,000 to $100,000 from the firm for investments.

The case is on appeal. Cahn was unapologetic.

"Most of my cases are fact-based and I follow the law," he said. "If I'm wrong, the Appellate Division lets me know." Similarly, Justice Edward Lehner defended his handling of a 2001 case involving American Express, though he did not reveal his wife owned 200 shares in the firm.

"I can't believe anybody may want me to recuse because I own a couple of hundred shares of a company," said Lehner, who ruled in favor of Amex. "Maybe they would."

While Lehner's wife's Amex shares represent a minuscule interest in the firm, the public has no way of knowing the extent of a judge's holdings. Disclosure forms available to the public censor the number of stock shares and their value.

Some judges acknowledged their mistakes and vowed to change.

"It has not been at the forefront of my attention," said Justice Paula Omansky, who failed to disclose conflicts in 20 cases cited by The News. "Certainly, disclosure is a legitimate and valid requirement for judges."

Of the 20 cases in which Omansky admitted she failed to disclose relevant stock investments, some were settled before she played a significant role and some were dismissed.

In nine cases she ruled in favor of a party in which she owned stock.

In 2000, for example, Salomon Smith Barney sued a stockbroker who took a job at a competitor after handling $16 million worth of Salomon accounts.

Omansky issued a temporary restraining order that prevented the broker from working with former clients.

Omansky owned stock in Salomon Smith Barney.

In 2001, a man sued Johnson & Johnson claiming Propulsid, a drug used to treat heartburn, contributed to the sudden death of his college-age daughter from heart failure.

The case is pending before Omansky, who owns stock in Johnson & Johnson.

"The next time that case comes before me," Omansky said, "I'm definitely going to disclose it."

Justice Shirley Kornreich, facing election to her second 10-year term on the bench this year, said she may have missed such conflicts in 11 cases.

Kornreich vowed that she and her husband will sell all their stock and buy mutual funds, which are exempt from conflict-of-interest rules.

"My reputation is more important," she said. "I have chosen to sell my small amounts of stock rather than have to deal with the onus of following what stock I own on each and every case."

Judge Karla Moskowitz recalled that lawyers in a Citibank case years ago advised her the bank had no connection to Citigroup, in which her husband owned stock.

For years she heard Citibank cases. Citigroup is a holding company that owns Citibank.

"I have since learned that that advice was incorrect, and I am troubled by any appearance of conflict," she said. "No one has questioned my impartiality.

"My husband has divested himself of the Citigroup stock so I can avoid any possible issues of conflict in the future," said Moskowitz, who is president of the National Association of Women Judges.

New York's court rules say judges must excuse themselves from cases if they have any financial interest, "however small."

That includes relationships with lawyers, especially if they are former law partners or personal counsel.

Justice Charles Ramos named his high school chum, attorney Michael Miller, to a foreclosure on a luxury condo. Miller collected rent - and took a percentage of interest and fees. Through November 1997, Ramos okayed $176,000 in payments to his friend.

Two years later, Miller provided the judge with free legal representation when Ramos and his wife obtained three parking spaces in a garage near their upper Manhattan apartment. A Dec. 21, 1999, deed lists Miller as their attorney.

When the arrangement came to light, Miller told a court inspector general he could not recall charging Ramos a fee.

Ramos is now on the board of directors of the New York County Lawyers Association, of which Miller is president.

Miller did not return calls seeking comment. Ramos said he told the buyer in the real estate transaction to pay Miller and that he no longer awards Miller court appointments.

Other potential conflicts were uncovered in The News investigation.

Judge Alice Schlesinger accepted a slip-and-fall case where a doctor sued a Chinese restaurant renting the ground floor of the judge's midtown co-op building.

Schlesinger, a stockholder in the co-op like any other resident, benefits from the rent the co-op collects. In this case both the restaurant and the co-op owners were sued. One issue was how much of each's insurance covered the mishap.

Schlesinger's assistant said the judge herself never met with the attorneys. A law clerk handled all preliminary business. Lawyers say they settled before any issue reached the judge.

Their defense
 
Justice Paula Omansky
Case: Alexis Garraway vs. Verizon Wireless, 2002

An actor who can't afford his own lawyer claims Verizon Wireless failed to pay him for his work as an extra in a TV commercial filmed in Washington Square. Omansky dismisses the actor's do-it-yourself complaint for failing to properly cite the law.

Conflict of interest: Omansky's husband owns shares of Verizon Communications, but the judge fails to disclose his stock ownership in court.

Comment: "I think your inquiry has put us on notice that there is or could be a problem," Omansky said.

Justice Karla Moskowitz
Case: DeMicco Brothers Inc., vs. Consolidated Edison and Empire City Subway Co. Ltd. a Verizon company, 2002

A Queens contractor sues Verizon and other utilities, saying he could not finish a street repair on time because utility cables blocked his equipment. Moskowitz shoots down the suit, citing a "legitimate business reason" not to move the wires. "It was as if we were intruders in this matter rather than legitimate litigants, as in, 'How dare we bother these big people,'" said attorney Frederick Levine. An appeal is pending.

Conflict of interest: Moskowitz's husband owned shares in Verizon, but the judge failed to disclose his ownership in court.

Comment: "Over the last five years, I have heard over 1,500 multiparty cases," Moskowitz said. "No one has questioned my impartiality."

Justice Herman Cahn
Case: Salomon Smith Barney vs. Mendel Kaff, 2001

A private broker fails to repay his $22,000 margin loan from Salomon Smith Barney and the brokerage firm sues. They ultimately settle the case.

Conflict of interest: Cahn has a margin loan with Salomon himself but does not disclose this in court.

Comment: Cahn said he does not believe he violated any ethical rules.

Justice Shirley Kornreich
Case: Brian Coke vs. Citibank, 2001

A Jamaican developer with an office in Brooklyn, acting without an attorney, sues Citibank, alleging the bank has mangled numerous charges to his account processed through an ATM in Kingston, Jamaica, that he uses to pay his workers. The developer settles his case after an unfavorable ruling from Kornreich.

Conflict of interest: Kornreich owns shares of Citigroup but fails to disclose her stock ownership in court.

Comment: Kornreich said she does not believe she violated any ethical rules. "The volume of work is crushing," she said.

Justice Helen Freedman
Case: Joseph Maira vs. Dr. Lance Austen, 2001

A local couple sues a doctor and drug distributor Merck-Medco, a pharmacy chain owned by Merck Corp., over the diabetes drug Rezulin. Freedman dismisses the case against Merck-Medco, ruling that "the pharmacy that sold the drug or filled the prescription cannot be held liable."

Conflict of interest: Freedman owned shares of Merck Corp. but failed to disclose her stock ownership in court.

Comment: "I must have missed it," Freedman said, explaining she did not notice Merck was a defendant. Months later, she sold all her stock. "It makes my life easier," she said.

Next: The Queen of Conflicts.

                       Judges Take Stock of Holdings - and Sell

by Brad Hamilton
New York Post
February 8, 2004

Several Manhattan Supreme Court judges have dumped their stocks after conflict-of-interest questions were raised amid an FBI corruption probe, courthouse sources said.

The federal investigation, which focuses on embattled Justice Marylin Diamond, but includes other jurists, is looking into whether judges doled out favorable rulings to friends and firms in which they owned a stake.

Diamond and her husband, former Supreme Court Justice Franklin Weissberg, have owned more than 40 stocks and bonds  in companies including JP Morgan Chase, Verizon, Time Warner and other firms whose cases she's ruled on, according to Diamond's financial disclosure forms.

But she and other judges have been selling their holdings in the wake of stories about the matter, sources said.

The Post reported last month that the FBI has pored over records and interviewed at least 30 litigants to determine if undisclosed personal interests swayed the judges' decisions.

Under state court rules, judges must disclose all their personal holdings worth more than $1,000  including stocks, real estate and retirement accounts  along with the financial interests of their spouses and minor children.

They are required to be fully informed about their finances and disclose in court any ties they have to the parties appearing before them, the rules say.

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Shirley Kornreich, who in an interview with The Post denied being aware of the stocks she had listed on her disclosure forms, said she was going to unload her holdings.

"I told my broker to sell it all and put everything in a mutual fund," she said.

One of Diamond's lawyers, Harold Tyler, told The Post last year that her stocks weren't selected by her but by a broker  and that the judge wasn't aware of which stocks he'd picked.

Chief Judge Judith Kaye will address the issue of corruption in the courts in her state-of-the-

judiciary speech tomorrow, one court source said.

No More Recuses: Suit Gets Day in Court

by Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
February 5, 2004

The seventh time may be the charm for Anthony DeRosa - a Manhattan judge has actually agreed to preside over his case.

DeRosa, who sparked investigations into conflict-of-interest allegations against the Manhattan judiciary, has had five judges take themselves off his foreclosure-related case six times in the past month.

DeRosa is being sued by a man who tried to buy his foreclosed apartment.

DeRosa had sued JPMorgan Chase to block the bank's attempt to foreclose on his apartment. Justice Marylin Diamond ruled in the bank's favor.

DeRosa found Diamond owns stock in and had other ties to the bank. The FBI is investigating his findings.

In the buyer's suit against him, DeRosa asked Justice Shirley Kornreich to recuse herself because she also has ties to the bank.

Kornreich refused, but changed her mind after The Post reported she was also being investigated. Since that time, Justices Richard Braun (twice), Sheila Abdus-Salaam, Harold Beeler and Marcy Friedman have all gotten DeRosa's case - and taken themselves off it. Justice Jane Solomon accepted it yesterday.

           Foreclosure Suit Becomes Hot Potato for City Judges

Tom Perrotta
New York Law Journal
February 4, 2004

Dozens of lawsuits are randomly assigned to Civil Court judges in Manhattan each day, but there seems to be one litigant that none of the jurists at 60 Centre Street want in their courtroom: Anthony DeRosa.

In the last three weeks, five Supreme Court justices have recused themselves from Mr. DeRosa's dispute over the foreclosure of his Upper West Side apartment three of them since last Friday. Four of the five have taken a pass on Mr. DeRosa without being asked to do so. Three have given reasons, two have not.

Attorneys who both represent and oppose Mr. DeRosa, however, point to an unspoken reason for this rare and fast-moving game of hot potato: the reputation Mr. DeRosa has built for himself in the last few years as a relentless litigant who is more than willing to make his case in the press.

When J.P. Morgan Chase foreclosed on his Upper West Side apartment and sold it at an auction in 2001, Mr. DeRosa sued to get it back, claiming he was never notified of the sale.

Supreme Court Justice Marilyn G. Diamond ruled against him, but Mr. DeRosa appealed, arguing that Justice Diamond should not have heard his case because she has investments in Chase, and that her husband also has a relationship with the bank. The allegations, as well as an investigation into Justice Diamond by the FBI, have been widely reported in the press. Mr. DeRosa said he is cooperating with the FBI investigation and his appeal is pending in the Appellate Division, First Department.

Justice Diamond's ruling was only the beginning, though. A subsequent action - filed by Semyon Pesochinsky, who bought Mr. DeRosa's apartment at auction- has bounced through the chambers of five judges, landing on the desk of a sixth one, Acting Justice Jane S. Solomon, yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Pesochinsky had sued to force Mr. DeRosa to pay maintenance on the co-op, in which Mr. DeRosa still resides. The case was first assigned to Acting Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich, but Mr. DeRosa asked to the judge to recuse herself from the case since she, too, owned stock in J.P. Morgan Chase. In court papers, he noted his previous case before Justice Diamond, as well as the FBI investigation and the press attention it received. Justice Kornreich stayed on the case and, in December, ruled in Mr. Pesochinsky's favor, ordering Mr. DeRosa to pay thousands of dollars in back maintenance.

In January, though, Justice Kornreich's name appeared in a New York Post article that reported on an alleged FBI investigation that had been broadened to include the judge. She then recused herself, citing a concern that she might appear to be biased against Mr. DeRosa as the case continued. Justice Kornreich stepped aside, on Jan. 13, and since then four judges have said no to Mr. DeRosa - all of their own volition. Justice Richard F. Braun declined to take the case because he lives in the same building as Jeffrey M. Eilender of Schlam Stone & Dolan, one of Mr. Pesochinsky's attorneys.

Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam held a hearing last week, saying she was "aware that there had been a lot of difficulties" surrounding the case, according to a transcript. She proceeded to discuss any disclosures either side expected her to make.

After a brief recess, though, Justice Abdus-Salaam said she was aware that the Daily News is planning a story on alleged conflicts of interest of Manhattan judges - a story that she said would likely focus on her, among others. Although the judge said "I believe whatever the Daily News is about to say about me is totally unfounded," she had decided to recuse herself. She suggested that Mr. DeRosa's lawyer,David B. Cohen of Scarsdale, move for a change of venue out of Manhattan.


On Monday, the case was assigned to Acting Justice Harold B. Beeler, who recused himself without reason. The court's random computer program spat out another name yesterday - Acting Justice Marcy S. Friedman - and she recused herself, without reason. Then, Justice Braun was randomly assigned again, but he had already recused himself. Justice Solomon was the last to receive the case yesterday, and she called for a hearing this morning.

While judges may explain their decision to recuse themselves, they are not required to do so, according to David Bookstaver, Office of Court Administration spokesman.

If there is one thing that both attorneys for Mr. DeRosa and Mr. Pesochinsky agree on, it is that few strong reasons - under the law - have been offered for therash of recusals.

"It think it's just become a political hot potato and they just don't want to touch it," said Mr. Cohen of the judges. "They think it is going rub off on them." Mr. Cohen argues that Mr. DeRosa can no longer receive a fair hearing in Manhattan, and he intends to move for a change of venue. He said he almost did so before Justice Abdus-Salaam was assigned the case, but he thought she was a fair jurist "who calls them like she sees them."

Different View

Mr. Eilender and his co-counsel, John McFerrin-Clancy, have a different view of the matter, and sum it up with the word "extortion."

"These judges saw what happened to Justice Diamond in the press, they saw [Mr.] DeRosa's threat against Justice Kornreich, which was carried out," Mr. McFerrin-Clancy said. "This is rank extortion depriving us of our day in court. Mr. Cohen and Mr. DeRosa run the courthouse now."

Mr. Eilender said he has filed a complaint against Mr. Cohen to the disciplinary committee; Mr. Cohen said sanctions are appropriate against Mr. Eilender, though he does not think he could win them.

Mr. DeRosa, for his part, said he just wants his apartment back, and that he can easily raise the money needed to pay off the mortgage. "What am I doing wrong?" he said. "I am trying to save my home."

Mark C. Zauderer, a partner at Piper Rudnick and the chair of a commission on jury reform,
said he had never seen anything like this in all his years of practice.

"Generally, for good policy reasons, judges should not recuse themselves from cases unless there is a reason to do so, because the obligation to sit on a case comes with the job," Mr. Zauderer said. "I cannot recall a situation like this where a case has gone through the dockets of this many judges. I don't presume to know the reason for it, but it is certainly unusual."

Justice Solomon's turn is next.

           State Court Probe Eyes Judge and 'Art of the Steal'

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
January 18, 2004

The state court system is investigating charges that embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Marylin Diamond lied about her relationship with an art heiress to loot the woman's trusts.

Vickie Ma, an attorney for the Commission on Judicial Conduct, met last week with David B. Cohen, a lawyer who represents heiress Natasha Gelman's only surviving relatives, and judicial activist Anthony DeRosa.

Ma asked Cohen about a 1998 letter that Diamond wrote to her boss, chief administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, seeking his permission to act as a co-trustee of the funds, according to a transcript obtained by The Post.

In the letter, Diamond claimed to be "like a daughter" to Gelman.

Lippman gave the OK, citing a "longstanding personal relationship" between Diamond and Gelman, who died in 1998 and left behind an estimated $400 million fortune.

But the appointment apparently doesn't take in to account a deposition Diamond gave in 2000 in which she could not recall ever having met Gelman's husband and couldn't provide details of any social meetings with the couple.

Ma asked Cohen about the deposition, and two letters that Cohen wrote to Lippman in September objecting to having Diamond serve as a trustee.

Cohen charged that "Natasha Gelman either did not know Diamond . . . or else was suffering from dementia." He also argued that Diamond's letter to Lippman left out key financial details of her deal with the trusts.

Diamond, the subject of an FBI probe into judicial corruption, could not be reached for comment.

                                     'Conflict' Judge Benches Self

by Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
January 16, 2004

A Manhattan judge who accused judicial activist Anthony DeRosa of threatening her with allegations of conflict of interest has now stepped down from his case.

State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich recused herself from DeRosa's case two days after a Post report that said she was being eyed amid conflict allegations against another Manhattan judge, Marylin Diamond.

"She thought it was the right thing to do after the Post article," because DeRosa's complaints against the judge could lead to the appearance of a
KORNREICH                                        conflict, said David Bookstaver, a spokesman
Bank ties an issue.                        for the state Office of Court Administration.

The foreclosure over which Kornreich has been presiding has turned into a major headache for the judiciary. The main part of the case - where JPMorgan Chase Bank was trying to foreclose on DeRosa's West Side apartment - had been before Diamond, who ruled against DeRosa.

Afterward, DeRosa discovered Diamond owned stock in and had other ties to the bank, which she had never disclosed to him.

The case is being appealed, and DeRosa's research and complaints have resulted in ongoing investigations by the FBI and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Kornreich was presiding over a related matter: a suit against DeRosa by Semyon Pesochinsky, who had planned to buy his foreclosed apartment.

DeRosa had argued Kornreich should step aside because she also had stock and other ties to Chase.

NY Judge Recuses Herself After
Learning She Is Target of FBI Probe

By Cerisse Anderson
New York Lawyer
January 15, 2004

Although last month Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich refused to recuse herself from a foreclosure case that prompted an FBI investigation of another judge, she recused herself Tuesday from the remainder of the case after reading an article in Sunday's New York Post alleging the FBI was now investigating her and two other Manhattan judges for favoring friends in their rulings.

Justice Kornreich said yesterday she acted on her own to step out of the case because questions could be raised about the fairness of her rulings in light of the allegations.

In her earlier ruling in Pesochinsky v. DeRosa (NYLJ, Dec. 12), the judge rejected Anthony DeRosa's contention that she had a conflict of interest in his case because she owned stock in J.P. Morgan/Chase, which holds the mortgage in the foreclosure matter but was not a party in the case, and because she is acquainted through her involvement with Judges and Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert with two Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom partners who have sat on the J.P. Morgan/Chase board.

                                   FBI'S 'Bench' Press

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
January 11, 2004

EXCLUSIVE - The FBI is probing powerful Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond and two colleagues on the bench - Justices Shirley Kornreich and Judith Gische - for allegedly doling out judicial favors to friends and associates, sources close to the case said.

Agents in the FBI's 14-member corruption unit are examining a series of complex ties that link the judges to various people and firms appearing before them in dozens of cases.

At least 30 litigants have been interviewed by FBI agents, who are seeking to determine whether undis-
HEAT'S ON: Feds have interviewed       closed personal interests motivated the judge's rulings. itigants in cases handled by Manhattan
Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond.
 Juan Gonzalez                                     The FBI has been joined in recent weeks by
investigators from Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes' office, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the state court system's own disciplinary body, the Commission on Judicial Conduct, they said.

Among the cases that are being reviewed:

* A 1998 marital fight in which Diamond granted primary custody of two boys to the mother despite evidence that the woman had been treated for psychological problems and beat one of the kids on more than one occasion.

Documents show the mother works for Diamond as the listing broker of a ritzy Park Avenue residential property co-owned by the judge, but it's unclear when she began working for her.

The oldest boy, now 16, described the two women to The Post as friends and said they've had their nails done together.

* A $1 million settlement Kornreich awarded to the influential law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in a case over a disputed bill.

The judge did not reveal that she's the co-president of a breast-cancer charity whose board members include partners at Skadden, Arps, or that the charity holds its monthly meetings at the firm's Midtown offices.

* A personal-injury suit dismissed last year by Kornreich, who denied the claims of a 35-year-old deckhand allegedly sickened while working on a Hess petrochemical tanker.

Hess was represented by law firm Proskauer Rose - where Kornreich's husband, Edward, is a partner - in a separate suit the company brought against the deckhand's union and the captain of his ship.

Kornreich told The Post she didn't know of Proskauer's involvement and would have recused herself if she had.

* Lucrative appointments that Diamond and Gische have made over the years to a select group of outside experts, including law guardians, psychologists and financial evaluators.

FBI spokesman James Margolin declined to discuss or confirm the probe.

Diamond - the target of a yearlong FBI probe into alleged conflicts of interest after ruling in favor of firms in which she owned stock - and Gische are among a half-dozen matrimonial jurists who decide divorce and custody matters.

The judges' ties extend beyond the courtroom.

Kornreich and Gische are both involved in Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert, which raises money for research and treatment of the disease.

Diamond and Kornreich are both stockholders in JP Morgan Chase, and Diamond presided over half a dozen cases involving the bank until recusing herself on them last year after The Post reported on the matter.

Last month, Kornreich ruled on one aspect of a foreclosure case brought by the bank against Anthony De Rosa, the Wall Street researcher whose private probe of Diamond sparked the FBI probe.

But Kornreich denied that her decision had anything to do with Chase or that any of her decisions were colored by outside interests.

Gische could not be reached for comment.

Said court spokesman David Bookstaver: "If there is such an investigation, to imply any wrongdoing whatsoever, pending its conclusion, is unfair and inappropriate."

Many of the allegations were brought to the FBI by the Alliance for Judicial Justice, a group of 200 litigants who feel their cases were tainted by judicial misconduct.

Group spokesman De Rosa, who complained about Kornreich this week at a meeting with the Commission on Judicial Conduct, said he was encouraged by the probe.

"I'm glad that the FBI is taking this incredibly seriously and planning to do something about the cesspool in Manhattan Supreme Court," he said.

Investigators Scoping out Manhattan-Brooklyn Link

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
January 11, 2004

FBI and state investigators are looking into possible links between judicial corruption charges in Brooklyn and Manhattan, sources close to the cases said.

Federal agents are teaming up with the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office to compare evidence against cousin judges Gerald and Michael Garson in Kings County and allegations against judge Marylin Diamond and another jurist in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Probers are revisiting the case of Michael Garson, the Brooklyn Supreme Court judge who last month was ordered to repay $163,000 to his elderly aunt, Sarah Gershenoff, after draining the 91- year-old woman's account.

Gershenoff worked for 50 years as a secretary at KMZ Rosenman with high-profile divorce lawyer Bernard Clair, who's being investigated by the FBI after he gave Diamond a $777 campaign contribution and hired her law secretary while arguing a divorce case before her.

Investigators are also taking a closer look at Manhattan judge Judith Gische, whose sealing of the court records in the Michael Garson matter sparked an inquiry by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.

Gische later unsealed the records and was cleared of any wrongdoing by the CJC, according to court spokesman David Bookstaver.

Her handling of lucrative appointments to outside court experts is being reviewed by the FBI, sources said. Bribery charges against Gerald Garson may also have a Manhattan connection.

Gerald Garson's alleged go-between, lawyer Paul Siminovsky, is a former partner of Jacoby & Meyers co-founder Gail Koff, who got a favorable settlement from Diamond in her own divorce case.

The case was the same one in which Clair made the campaign contribution to Diamond.

In her ruling, Diamond determined that Jacoby & Meyers had no value and socked Koff's ex-husband, architect Ralph Brill, with millions in debt obligations.

Koff strongly denied that she's done anything wrong.

"These [charges] are just rumors and innuendo, and it's just really upsetting," Koff said. "There's no truth to it."

Diamond on Thin Ice with State

By Bill Hutchinson and
Michele McPhee
Daily News
January 9, 2004

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct is investigating possible ethical violations by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, the Daily News has learned.

Attorneys for the commission began interviewing witnesses this week about Diamond's questionable conduct on and off the bench, sources said.

Wall Street researcher Anthony DeRosa confirmed last night that he met with lawyers for the commission Tuesday to talk about charges he has made against Diamond.

Robert Tembeckjian, director of the commission, declined to comment last night on the investigation.

DeRosa said he was questioned about a case involving JPMorganChase, which foreclosed on his upper West Side apartment when he failed to make his mortgage payments.

In a case before Diamond, DeRosa claimed the bank botched the foreclosure. But Diamond ruled in favor of the bank.

It was later learned that Diamond owned stock in the bank, which she had failed to disclose.

DeRosa said his lawyer, David Cohen, also was interviewed Tuesday by the commission lawyers.

Cohen also represents the family of the late Natasha Gelman, who was a wealthy upper East Side art collector.

Gelman's family alleges that Diamond took advantage of Natasha Gelman's dementia to appoint herself trustee of her $500 million estate. As trustee, Diamond was paid $1 million and receives yearly commissions.

Cohen was issued a subpoena yesterday by the commission to come back to testify under oath, sources said.

In April, the commission dismissed more than a dozen complaints against Diamond, even as the FBI launched an investigation into her conduct.

Last year, The News reported that the NYPD investigated Diamond for penning threats to herself, but she was never charged. The threats had led police and the state court officials to provide Diamond with around-the-clock security protection, which has since been dropped.

                                  Wall Streeter Cries Injustice

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
December 11, 2003

The Wall Street researcher whose allegations against Manhattan Judge Marylin Diamond led to a federal investigation yesterday accused a second judge - who ruled against him in a recent case - of trying to protect her embattled colleague.

Anthony DeRosa took aim at Shirley Werner Kornreich, who claims he threatened her with conflict-of-interest allegations.

DeRosa told The Post he never threatened Kornreich and said the timing of her decision against him - which also praised Diamond - is highly suspect.

"She's trying to look out for her fellow judge," DeRosa said.

After Diamond shot down DeRosa in his foreclosure fight with JPMorgan Chase Bank, he learned the judge owned stock in and had other ties to the bank, which she never disclosed to him - an apparent contravention of judicial rules. DeRosa's research into Diamond's finances has led to an ongoing FBI investigation.

DeRosa questioned Kornreich's timing because he's currently awaiting the outcome of an appeal of Diamond's decisions in a related case, where he argues all of her rulings should be tossed because of the undisclosed conflict.

Kornreich found DeRosa's claims had been "fully and fairly litigated before Justice Diamond."

DeRosa had also asked Kornreich to recuse herself from his case because she, like Diamond, has some ties to JPMorgan Chase. Kornreich acknowledged in her decision that she does have links to the bank, but said she wouldn't remove herself because it isn't directly involved in her aspect of the case.

"In declining to submit to Mr. DeRosa's threats, I note only that my ownership" of Chase securities "does not constitute a conflict of interest," she wrote.

                        Judge Blasts Colleague's Accuser

by Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
December 10, 2003

A Manhattan judge is offering a colleague who's the target of an FBI investigation some words of praise - and is accusing the man who blew the whistle on her fellow jurist of threatening her.

In a decision made public yesterday, state Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich said Anthony DeRosa had asked that she recuse herself from his case because of alleged conflicts of interest, but she was "declining to submit to his threats." DeRosa called the threat allegation "untrue" and "outrageous."

Kornreich made the comments in a decision in which she ruled against DeRosa in another case.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Dimond ruled against DeRosa's bid to stop JPMorgan Chase from foreclosing on his apartment. DeRosa appealed the ruling because Dimond owned JPMorgan Chase stock - and the FBI began a probe of the judge.

Kornreich, who's presiding over a suit brought against DeRosa by the man who planned to buy his foreclosed apartment, said the other case was "fairly litigated before Justice Dimond."

Kornreich also refused to recuse herself, acknowledging that while she also owns JPMorgan Chase stock, there is no conflict of interest because the bank isn't involved in the case before her. She said DeRosa's threat came in the form of his noting that the conflict charges against Dimond have caused her "considerable trouble."

           Judge Denies Defendant's Motion for Her Recusal

Cerisse Anderson
New York Law Journal
12-09-2003

Rejecting claims of conflicts of interest that prompted an FBI investigation of another jurist, a Manhattan judge has decline to recuse herself from a foreclosure case because she owns stock  in J.P. Morgan/Chase and is acquainted with lawyers on the bank's board. The decision will be published Friday.

Acting Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich last week in Pesochinsky v. DeRosa, 126043/02, denied Anthony DeRosa's motion that she recuse herself from ruling in an action seeking to force him to pay maintenance on a co-op apartment he lost in a foreclosure sale but has refused to vacate.

Mr. DeRosa had said in his recusal motion that he also had raised allegations of actual or apparent conflicts of interest against another judge, Acting Justice Marylin G. Diamond, who had ruled against him last year in related litigation in which he sought to annul the foreclosure on his Manhattan apartment on West 89th Street.

"He warns that before the court issues a decision on the instant matter, it should take notice of all the media coverage pertaining to myself, [Justice Diamond], [and] the FBI investigation that his earlier complaints of conflict of interest' have produced," Justice Kornreich noted.

Mr. DeRosa argued on his appeal of Justice Diamond's ruling on the foreclosure that she had a conflict of interest because she failed to disclose that she owned stock in JP Morgan Chase. The ruling on the appeal by the Appellate Division, First Department, is pending.

Mr. DeRosa's allegations of Justice Kornreich's conflicts included the fact that she is president of Judges and Lawyers Breast Cancer Alert, which holds some of its meetings in the offices of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. She is acquainted with two Skadden partners, Sheila Birnbaum and Helene Kaplan, who have sat on J.P. Morgan/Chase's board of directors. And her 2002 financial disclosure forms indicate she owns stock in J.P. Morgan/Chase, the judge recounted in her ruling.

Justice Kornreich refused Mr. DeRosa's demand that she disclose other unlisted investments "so that he 'could be made fully aware of if there are any more conflicts of interest.'" And she concluded that her ownership of publicly traded securities of JP Morgan/Chase did not constitute a conflict of interest because it was not a party to the action before her.

"J.P. Morgan/Chase will not benefit from any ruling by this court, because J.P. Morgan/Chase will receive its money from [Semyon Pesochinsky, the investor who bought the apartment for $200,000 at public auction] regardless of whether or not DeRosa reimburses Pesochinsky for his maintenance payments," the judge said in denying the motion for recusal.

Mr. DeRosa yesterday rejected Justice Kornreich's ruling as "simply her protecting" another judge, and he said he intended to appeal.

Justice Kornreich granted Mr. Pesochinsky's motion for summary judgment on his unjust enrichment claim against Mr. DeRosa, and ordered Mr. DeRosa to pay $42,562, which represents maintenance payments on the apartment from July 2000 to December 2002, plus interest. She also declared that Mr. DeRosa owed Mr. Pesochinsky maintenance from December 2002 onward for as long as he remains in the apartment.

Mr. DeRosa had taken a $192,000 mortgage from Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. in 1998 to buy the co-op shares, but after about two years he stopped making the monthly mortgage payments to Chase and the maintenance payments to the co-op, prompting the foreclosure, the judge said.

Justice Kornreich dismissed Mr. DeRosa's affirmative defenses to Mr. Pesochinsky's claims, finding that they were barred by the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel because they had been "thoroughly presented in the prior proceeding before Justice Diamond."

Mr. DeRosa was represented by David B. Cohen in Scarsdale. John McFerrin-Clancy, Jeffrey M. Eilender and Leah Campbell of Schlam Stone & Dolan appeared for Mr. Pesochinsky.

Feds Eye 'Conflict' Lawyer

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
November 13, 2003

A high-powered divorce attorney is being investigated by the FBI and the state-court inspector general for alleged influence peddling after he gave campaign money to embattled Judge Marylin Diamond and hired her law clerk while arguing a case before her, The Post has learned.

The probe of Bernard Clair - who has represented the likes of Georgette Mosbacher, Carolyn Roehm and Jocelyn Wildenstein in marital matters - is part of the FBI's expanding investigation into possible conflicts of interest
MARYLIN DIAMOND         involving Manhattan Supreme Court Justice  Diamond,
Judge got $$ during case.         sources familiar with the probe said.

The investigation began after Ralph Brill, a Putnam County architect, lost his divorce case before Diamond in 2000, then discovered that his wife's lawyer had made a campaign contribution to the judge.

He complained to Jacqueline Silbermann, the state's chief matrimonial judge, about the cash and Clair's hiring of Diamond's former top legal clerk, Jad Greifer, during Brill's divorce.

Silbermann passed the complaint to inspector general Sherrill Spatz, who met with Brill. The architect also met with FBI probers.

Diamond granted a split to Brill's ex-wife, millionaire lawyer Gail Koff, who owns the Jacoby & Meyers law firm.

The judge ruled that Jacoby & Meyers - then fighting with the IRS over unpaid back taxes - had no value and socked Brill with 50 percent of what she concluded was the firm's $8 million in debt. She also froze his assets.

Clair contributed $777 to Diamond's 2000 re-election campaign, state election records show.

Clair also hired Greifer to work with him at his firm, KMZ Rosenman, while arguing the Koff case, documents show.

Brill objected to the hiring at the trial, but Diamond allowed it.

Brill filed an appeal of the decision with the state's Appellate Division, alleging that Diamond's rulings were biased.

His lawyer, Ronald Cohen, will argue the case before the judicial panel in Manhattan today.

"We want a whole new trial," said Brill, who is part of the Alliance for Judicial Justice, a group of litigants who claim they lost their cases before Diamond because of prejudice.

Asked to comment on Brill's charges, alliance spokesman Anthony DeRosa said, "It seems to be that it's not what you know in the legal profession, but who you know."

Probed Justice Still Trust-Worthy: Judge

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
October 20, 2003

EXCLUSIVE - What one of the state's top judges giveth, he won't taketh away.

Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippmann has rejected a request to rescind the permission he gave embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond to run a $30 million trust, The Post has learned.

The FBI has been investigating conflict of interest charges MARYLIN DIAMOND                   involving Diamond, 62, since late last year. She's also
OK'd to run $30M trust               being looked at by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and the inspector general of the state Office of Court Administration.

One focus of the FBI investigation is the judge's role in the estate of Natasha Gelman, who died in 1998 leaving behind an estimated $400 million fortune. Gelman's will named Diamond, who was her lawyer in the late 1980s, a co-trustee of the multimillion-dollar Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust.

Gelman's surviving family members charge Gelman's will is a fraud carried out by Diamond and two other lawyers who took advantage of the Alzheimer saddled art heiress to get at her money.

The lawyer for Gelman's lone surviving relatives, the Jung family, wrote to Lippmann last month urging him to rescind his permission because Diamond had omitted "important and relevant information" from Lippmann.

                          Judge Diamond in the Rough

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
October 14, 2003

EXCLUSIVE - The state's top administrative judge is weighing a request to revoke the special permission he granted embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond allowing her to serve as a co-trustee for a multimillion-dollar charitable trust, The Post has learned.

If Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippmann grants the request, that could force Diamond to choose between keeping her judgeship and her potentially lucrative position as trustee of the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust.

Diamond was once a lawyer for the late Natasha Gelman, who left behind an estimated $400 million fortune when she died in 1998. As The Post first reported in 2000, Gelman named Diamond as co-trustee in a will the art heiress's family charges was made while she was mentally incompetent.

"Diamond's a trustee of a trust that shouldn't even exist," said Gelman's cousin, Jerry Jung, who's challenging the documents validity.

The case is under review by the FBI, which is also investigating conflict of interest charges against Diamond.

Because she's a sitting judge, Diamond, 62, had to seek approval from Lippmann to administer the trust when Gelman died. He granted it after Diamond wrote him saying she "was like a daughter" to Gelman, and that her work would "not interfere with my judicial duties in any way." Jung family lawyer David Cohen wrote Lippmann on Sept. 24 asking him to rescind his approval, arguing Diamond had omitted "important and relevant information" when she wrote to him, including not mentioning the size and details of the trust and the controversy over it.

Cohen called that "a calculated, deliberate, and successful attempt at deception."

State filings show the trust has $32 million in assets. While Diamond doesn't receive a salary from it, she does receive commissions - $46,000 in 2001, and $15,000 in 2000.

Lippmann's spokesman, David Bookstaver, refused to comment on the letter, but said his boss had received it "and I assume he will be responding in the near future."

Diamond's lawyer, Jane Parver, said there was no deceit on her client's part, and disputed Cohen's contention that Diamond stands to make millions from her position.

"It's a charitable trust," she said, adding that its size is not an issue for her client.

"It's my understanding it does not take time from Judge Diamond's schedule, apart from the nights and weekends," she said.

Parver noted that Jung's two previous attempts to get the will tossed in Lichtenstein and Manhattan - where a judge found Gelman was "in all respects competent" when she signed the will - were unsuccessful, and called their pending federal court lawsuit "a third bite from the apple."

Jung pointed to a taped 1994 phone conversation he had with Gelman where she says she doesn't know who Diamond is as proof the judge lied to Lippmann.

"She betrayed my aunt," he said. "This isn't just a fight for money. This is a fight for what's right."

No Order of Protection for Judge Diamond

By Michele Mcphee
Daily News Police Bureau Chief
October 8, 2003

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond thinks she needs protection against a former litigant - but a federal judge doesn't see it that way.

Diamond's bid yesterday for an order of protection against Wall Street researcher Anthony DeRosa was rejected by Manhattan Federal Magistrate Judge Theodore Katz.

Diamond's lawyer, Jane Parver, contended the judge needed the court's protection from unfair "sleuthing" into her personal finances by DeRosa, 37.

DeRosa, a forensic investigator, was one of the organizers of the Diamond Support Group, a coalition of litigants who say she ruled against them because of political alliances and personal vendettas.

His findings have prompted the FBI to investigate Diamond for possible conflicts of interest in her rulings.

Parver slammed the phone down when asked to comment on the proceedings.

In 2002, Diamond ruled against DeRosa in a case involving JPMorgan Chase, a decision that he has appealed because the judge failed to disclose that she owned stock in the bank.

"If Judge Diamond has not done anything wrong, what is she so afraid of? I'm flattered that she is intimidated by an average New York City guy who is exposing who she really is - a liar, a crook and a thief," DeRosa said yesterday.

DeRosa is working with attorney David Cohen, who filed a lawsuit against Diamond on behalf of the family of an elderly art tycoon, Natasha Gelman.

Gelman's family alleges that Diamond took advantage of her dementia to appoint herself trustee of the woman's multimillion-dollar estate. As trustee, Diamond was paid $1 million and receives yearly commissions.

Last year, the Daily News reported that the NYPD investigated Diamond for writing herself threats, but she was never charged. The threats had led police and the state court officials to provide Diamond with around-the-clock security protection.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/124761p-111962c.html

Judge Conflict Eyed in Perelman Divorce

by Brad Hamilton
New York Post
October 5, 2003

EXCLUSIVE --The FBI is investigating the Ronald Perelman-Patricia Duff divorce settlement after viewing documents that suggest one of the judges on the case may have had a conflict of interest, sources close to the probe said. The divorce, and the custody battle for the couple's daughter, was one of the most bitterly contested in recent times, and the FBI's interest in the case is a new twist to the tangled saga. It is not yet known whether it could lead to the case being reopened.

    Patricia Duff                
    Peter Walden Sr.  
The FBI is looking at documents that name Manhattan Supreme Court judge Franklin Weissberg, who ordered billionaire Perelman to pay Duff $12,000 a month in child support - an amount considerably less than settlements for some other super-rich dads.

The documents show that Weissberg at the time of his ruling may have had financial ties to two companies whose board members included two of Perelman's most-trusted lieutenants, The Post has learned.

Investigators are also checking to see if there was any direct connection between Weissberg and Revlon, Perelman's cosmetics company.

The FBI interviewed Duff about the matter last week, sources said.

Weissberg is married to Judge Marylin Diamond, who bought Revlon corporate bonds in 1996, the year the Perelman-Duff divorce papers were filed. She held them until 1997, records show.

Diamond is under investigation by the FBI for possible conflicts of interest in six civil cases involving JPMorgan Chase after she failed to disclose her ownership of stock in the bank.

And the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into an alleged insider-trading charge after Diamond and Weissberg bought stock in both sides of a $2 billion merger deal between Verizon and Price Communications in 2002.

The alleged links in both cases were uncovered by Wall Street researcher Anthony DeRosa, who lost a foreclosure case before Diamond.

DeRosa also found that in 1999, Weissberg and Diamond both owned stock in Loral Space & Communications, a satellite firm whose board of directors includes Perelman's right-hand man, Howard Gittis.

Weissberg told The Post that Gittis accompanied Perelman to court "from time to time" during the divorce proceedings. He said he was unaware of Gittis' role at Loral and denied knowledge of owning stock in the company.

"To say this is a conflict of interest is totally reprehensible," Weissberg said. "I had a discretionary account. I didn't choose to buy the stock and I didn't choose to sell it. And I had no idea who was on the board of directors."

Weissberg also insisted his wife never owned any Revlon bonds.

When told she once listed them on her financial disclosure forms, he said, "I had no idea."

DeRosa's research also focused on Weissberg's dealings with Bob Price, a multimillionaire media baron.

The judge and his wife - close friends with Price - have owned stock in several of Price's companies, including Price Communications.

One firm, Price Publishing Co., was sold in 1998 for $175 million to American Lawyer Media, whose director is Perelman's other top lieutenant, Donald G. Drapkin.

Weissberg said of Drapkin: "I never heard of the man."

Diamond did not preside over any of the Perelman-Duff proceedings. But she ordered parts of the record sealed in 2000, a court record shows.

Duff, reached at her home, said she was uncertain what the allegations might mean to her and her daughter, Caleigh, 8. Perelman got custody of the girl in 2001.

"I think Anthony [DeRosa] has found a lot of things that undermine the integrity of what this system claims is OK," Duff said. "I'm not sure what the court will say about his evidence."

Perelman spokesman Jim Conroy said of the conflict allegations: "The connections are nonexistent and the suggestion of anything improper is totally ridiculous."

New facet in Case vs. Diamond
 

by Helen Peterson
Daily News Staff Writer
Thursday, October 2nd, 2003

When a case involving JPMorganChase entered the Manhattan courtroom of Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, she failed to disclose that she owned stock in the bank.

That failure led to an appellate hearing yesterday, where lawyers for Wall Street researcher Anthony DeRosa asked that the ruling against him be tossed.

The lawyers told an Appellate Division panel that Diamond's 2001 financial disclosure form indicated she owned the shares, which lawyers said are worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Attorney David Cohen said Diamond had an obligation "at the very least" to disclose her stock ownership at the outset of DeRosa's case.

Chase had foreclosed on DeRosa's upper West Side apartment when he failed to make his mortgage payments. The bank then sold the apartment; DeRosa says Chase botched the foreclosure proceedings.

A lawyer for Chase, Stephen Zaino, accused DeRosa's camp of spending little time talking about the merits of the case and more time launching "a personal attack on Justice Diamond."

The five-judge panel seemed to ignore the conflict-of-interest allegations, instead posing questions to determine whether it has the power to rule on DeRosa's case.

DeRosa is part of a group of men who claim Diamond ruled against them because of political and personal vendettas. The judge has denied the charges.

Some of the men also say they were questioned by cops after Diamond began receiving threatening letters. Law enforcement sources later said a criminal profiler concluded the judge wrote letters to herself to justify round-the-clock police protection.

The police never proved she wrote the letters, and Diamond has denied she did so.

The panel gave no indication of when it would rule.

Response from DeRosa -

Just wanted to let you know our thoughts about how ridiculous and insulting Judge Marylin Diamonds, and her husbands former Judge Franklin Weissbergs comments to the media regarding how they did not know what stocks and bonds they own and owned were.

First Point - They make public comments about how the accounts are discretionary therefore they have no control in the decision making process is self contradictory. Discretionary account means that the CLIENT has full discretion. Given that fact it is self defeating. I should know this, I worked on Wall Street my entire life.

Second Point - In their portfolio they own their friends (Robert Price) company Price Communications. Did their accountant pick that security magically out of thin air?  Robert Price had check-signing privileges on the judge's 2000 re-election campaign and kicked in $7,500 from himself and two family members.

Third Point - There are millions of dollars in the discretionary accounts with hundreds of thousands of dollars in several of the individual securities. It is insulting that the Judges want us to believe that they have no control in the decisions of the investments.

Fourth Point - They themselves sign their financial disclosure forms yearly, which are recorded with the Office of Court Administrations Ethics Commission. Are they attempting to tell us that Judges don't read what they sign? Of course they read it, they themselves are required to verify the documents and disclosures.

Fifth Point and most importantly - The Laws and Rules of the Judiciary is VERY clear on this. Listed below is the code which clearly states that a Judge shall be kept informed and make an effort to know of their interests. Which ever way you look at it, the Judges, Diamond and her husband Judge Weissberg have broken the Laws and Rules of which they themselves are suppose to enforce and adjudicate over. Canon 3 [§100.3](E)(2)

Code Of Judicial Conduct
Adopted by the
New York State Bar Association
Effective April 13, 1996

Canon 1: A Judge Shall Uphold the Integrity and Independence of the Judiciary

Canon 2: A Judge Shall Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety
All of the Judge’s Activities

Canon 3: A Judge Shall Perform the Duties if Judicial Office Impartially and Diligently 19 Canon 4: A Judge Shall So Conduct the Judge’s Extra-Judicial Activities as to Minimize the Risk of Conflict with Judicial Obligations 33 Canon 5: A Judge or Candidate for Elective Judicial Office Shall Refrain from Inappropriate Political Activity 50 Application of the Rules of
Judicial Conduct 58

Canon 3 [§100.3]
    (E) Disqualification.
          (2) A judge shall keep informed about the judge's personal and
fiduciary economic interests, and make a reasonable effort to keep informed
about the personal economic interests of the judge's spouse and minor
children residing in the judge's household.

                        Court May Toss Judge's Ruling

Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
October 2, 2003

-- A state appeals court indicated yesterday it might toss out all of an embattled Manhattan judge's rulings in a case that's led to a conflict-of-interest probe against her.

A five-judge panel of the state Appellate Division asked repeated questions that seemed to indicate that they agree all of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond's rulings in a case involving JPMorgan Chase should be reversed because she never disclosed she owned stock in the bank.

Diamond ruled in favor of Chase and against a Wall Street researcher named Anthony DeRosa in the case, which involved the bank's foreclosing on DeRosa's apartment.

Fraud Suit to Target Diamond

By Michele Mcphee
Daily News Staff Writer
September 16, 2003

It looks like more rough times ahead for embattled Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond.

The family of a wealthy art heiress plans to sue Diamond for fraud this week, the Daily News has learned.

It's not the first time relatives of the late Natasha Gelman, the multimillionaire collector and oft-painted muse for Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, have accused the judge of cheating her. But this time, a family attorney contends he's armed with new evidence.

Lawyer David Cohen said he is going into Manhattan Surrogate's Court seeking to vacate a previous judgment on grounds of "fraud, misrepresentation and other misconduct." That ruling favored Diamond.

Gelman's cousin Jaroslav Jung has maintained for years that Diamond, 62, manipulated Gelman's estate, lining her pockets at the expense of the judge's one-time client and her heirs.

A previous suit by Jung was dismissed by Manhattan Surrogate's Court Judge Eve Preminger in 2000.

But The News has learned that Cohen will cite probes of Diamond by the FBI, the city's Conflicts of Interest Board and other law enforcement agencies.

Cohen said Diamond duped Gelman into changing her will while her former client was suffering from dementia.

"You have to be a really, really low form of life to steal from people who are feeble. There is a special circle in hell for people like Diamond, who made changes to a trust document belonging to a woman who had Alzheimer's disease," Cohen said.

Diamond's lawyer Jane Parver had no comment on the pending litigation yesterday.

Diamond, best known for presiding over the divorce of art mogul Alec Wildenstein, has said she had nothing to do with Gelman's legal matters after becoming a judge 1991.

Gelman died at age 86 in 1998, leaving behind an estate worth nearly a half-billion dollars, including a $300 million art collection donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In her will, she left Diamond $1 million and named the judge trustee of her estate and art foundation, the Gelman Trust. Diamond earns thousands more a year in commissions as the estate's trustee.

Diamond has also been dogged by accusations she wrote threatening letters to herself to justify an around-the-clock security detail.

Last year, The News reported NYPD investigators and a noted criminal profiler believed Diamond wrote more than 48 letters to herself over a three-year period.

Though she eventually lost her guards, Diamond denied writing the letters and was never charged with wrongdoing.

But the story sparked a group of former litigants who said Diamond fingered them as authors of the missives to form a support group. All were men who were on the losing side of Diamond's decisions.

Diamond only recently returned to her courtroom at 60 Centre St. after a three-month absence described by a court spokesman as "annual leave."

"All I will say is that she is back at work," said the spokesman, David Bookstaver.


Judge Is Benched

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
September 15, 2003

-- EXCLUSIVE - A controversial Manhattan judge who's being investigated by the FBI is no longer being assigned new cases, The Post has learned.

State Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond has been quietly moved from an "individual assignment section" part at 60 Centre St. to a "hybrid general trial" part - meaning she's no longer getting new court cases to preside over, court sources said.

Diamond, 62, has been the subject of an FBI investigation into conflict-of-interest allegations since CASE KISS-OFF: Justice Marylin        this past December, and she's also being probed by
Diamond, the subject of an FBI           the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, the panel
probe, has been reassigned to a           charged with disciplining judges. Both probes are
new post in which she will not             looking at the judge's stock holdings.
handle new cases.                          
-By Juan Gonzalez                              The Post reported earlier this year that Diamond was
presiding over cases involving JP Morgan Chase and Verizon, even though she never told the case participants that she owned stock in those two companies.

State judiciary law requires that a judge reveal "ownership of shares of stock or other securities of a corporate litigant." Lawyers concerned about any potential conflicts of interest could then ask the judge to step down from the case.

Altogether, Diamond has presided over dozens of cases involving firms she has a financial interest in. Her lawyer, Harold Tyler, has said the judge was unaware of what stock she owned until earlier this year. Nevertheless, David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, insisted that Diamond's new assignment is procedural and not punitive.

"To characterize this as a punishment would be wrong," he said. "This is certainly not a punishment in any way, shape or form."

He added that the chief judge of Diamond's courthouse, Jacqueline Silbermann, reassigned Diamond around mid-summer "in the interest of keeping cases moving efficiently."

While she won't be getting new cases, Diamond will keep the more than 300 cases she still has pending before her, and will be available to preside over trials for other judges who have scheduling conflicts.

A courthouse source said the move was necessary because Diamond has recently started recusing herself from a large number of the cases she already had and a large number of new cases that were coming in to her because of her holdings.

Anthony DeRosa, who uncovered the judge's financial ties to Chase after losing a case before her against the bank, said the development makes him "feel validated."

"I'm incredibly satisfied that all my hard work is paying off," he said.

DeRosa - whose information sparked the FBI investigation - is appealing Diamond's ruling in his case, arguing all of her rulings should be declared "null and void" because she didn't disclose her stock interest.

Courting Disaster

By Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
August 11, 2003

A Manhattan man wants an appeals court to toss all of an embattled judge's rulings against him because of her alleged undisclosed conflicts of interest - the first in what could be a flood of such claims, The Post has learned.

Anthony DeRosa filed papers with the state Appellate Division arguing all of Justice Marylin Diamond's rulings in his case should be declared "null and void" because she didn't disclose that she owned stock in - and had other ties to - his opponent in the case, JPMorgan Chase Bank.

That omission violates judicial law, the appeal says.

If successful, DeRosa's appeal could open the door to numerous other litigants to look to vacate rulings in other cases Diamond has presided over involving companies she owns stock in.

"It could certainly have ramifications," said DeRosa's lawyer, Tom Shanahan. "Anytime there's even the potential for a conflict of interest, it has to be disclosed."

DeRosa, 37, brought suit against Chase in 2001 after the bank tried to foreclose on his apartment. The case was assigned to Diamond, who eventually ruled for the bank.

DeRosa says she ignored evidence of the bank having handled the foreclosure improperly.

DeRosa, a Wall Street researcher, turned his talents on the judge, and found her retired judge husband, Franklin Weissberg, was doing work for a law firm that did work for Chase.

He then looked at their state financial disclosure records, which showed both owned stock in the bank.

Those ties had never been disclosed to DeRosa, an apparent violation of state judiciary law, which requires a judge to reveal "ownership of shares of stock or other securities of a corporate litigant," the appeal says.

Monroe Freedman, a judicial ethics expert, said DeRosa should win his appeal.

"A judge should not have any financial interest in the matter," he said.

He added that if the judge failed to make disclosures in this and other cases, that could lead to disqualifications where "the judgment is vacated and the case starts all over again from scratch" before another judge, even if it's years old.

Diamond has presided over nine Chase cases since 2000, and five cases involving Verizon, another company she has a financial interest in. The Post reported last month that the lawyers in the Verizon cases were unaware of that interest.

Diamond recused herself from the Verizon cases a day after The Post story, and she's now recused herself from all Chase cases.

Lawyers for Diamond and JPMorgan Chase didn't return calls.

The FBI and state Commission on Judicial Conduct are investigating the conflict claims

'Conflict' Judge Faces New Hang-up over Stox Purchase

By Brad Hamilton
New York Post
July 13, 2003

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at stock purchases by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Diamond and her husband, The Post has learned.

Documents detailing how the couple separately bought into Verizon and Price Communications in 2002 - the same year the two companies merged in a $2 billion deal - were sent to the commission last week by Wall Street researcher Anthony DeRosa, who is privately investigating the judge.

DeRosa, who lost a foreclosure case before the judge in 2002, has been examining the holdings in his role as head of the Alliance for Judicial Justice, a group of litigants who feel they were victims of prejudice by Diamond and other judges.

"Something just doesn't seem right," said DeRosa.

DeRosa's research found that Price Communications is owned by Robert Price, a friend of Diamond's who had check-signing privileges on the judge's 2000 re-election campaign and kicked in $7,500 from himself and two family members.

It's unclear from 2002 state financial disclosure forms how much Verizon and Price stock is owned by Diamond and her husband, Franklin Weissberg, a former state judge, or if their purchases were made before the merger.

Following the merger last August, Price Communications stock jumped more than 30 percent to over $15 per share by January.

The SEC did not comment on DeRosa's allegations, but one source at the commission said of DeRosa, "We've communicated."

Diamond, who is under investigation by the FBI for alleged conflicts of interest, has been presiding over five court fights involving Verizon, but has not disclosed her or her husband's stakes in the merged company or recused herself from any of the cases, lawyers on those cases said.

"She never disclosed [her stock]. I had no idea," said Joseph Mullen Jr., a lawyer who worked on a suit against Verizon before Diamond.

Verizon attorney Robert L. Lewis said, "I don't think she's ever made mention of [her Verizon stock] one way or the other."

Under state court policy, a judge with "the appearance" of a financial tie to a party in a case isn't required to step aside, but only if the judge "divests himself or herself of the interest."

Harold Tyler, Diamond's lawyer, did not return calls seeking comment.

Rough on Diamond

by Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
July 2, 2003

A Manhattan judge who is the subject of a federal conflict-of-interest probe recently presided over a case where the plaintiff was the judge's own lawyer in a multimillion-dollar court fight, The Post has learned.

Seth Rubenstein successfully represented the judge, Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, in her Surrogate Court battle over the $300 million-plus estate of art heiress Natasha Gelman.

Partially because of his success in that portion of the many-tentacled estate case, Diamond received $1.1 million from Gelman's estate and was named co-trustee of a $30 million trust Gelman had left behind.

Rubenstein was still in Diamond's employ when he was substituted in as the plaintiff in a real-

estate brokerage-fee case that was already before her, Helen Miller versus Jane Ardsley Frocks.

The elderly Miller died on Sept. 13, 2001, and Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Renee Roth named Rubenstein the administrator of Miller's $300,000 estate.

Diamond signed an order naming him the new plaintiff in Miller's suit two months later.

His case remained before her until this past February, when the judge issued a one-sentence order recusing herself.

"The conflicts of interest seem endless in Marylin Diamond's courtroom," said Anthony DeRosa, spokesman for the Alliance for Judicial Justice, an organization comprised mostly of litigants who believe they were treated unfairly by Diamond.

DeRosa has been interviewed numerous times by the FBI about information he's provided them alleging the judge had an undisclosed conflict of interest in some bank cases over which she was presiding.

Law-enforcement sources have said the 6-month-old probe is also looking at the judge's role in the Gelman case.

Rubenstein's lawyer in the Frocks suit, Robert Sharon, said the judge's conduct was "totally aboveboard."

"She went out of her way on two occasions to say they were good friends," Sharon said, adding that the first time, his opposition in the case said he had no problem with her continuing to preside over it.

Sharon said that after the second disclosure, the Frocks lawyer said he wanted another judge on the case, so Diamond recused herself.

Diamond's current lawyer, Harold Tyler, was cryptic about what his client knew and when.

"What she did, she did," Tyler said.

He said Diamond was frustrated with the allegations. "She says no matter what I do, they'll say it's wrong," he said.

Rubenstein said he never went to court on the case, and was "surprised" to learn that Diamond had it: "I had no idea Judge Diamond was involved in any fashion."

When told she no longer had the case, he said, "I would think it's a good thing she recused herself" because of their relationship.

When told it took her 14 months to do so, he said "when she became aware of the fact I was in the case, I can't tell you. I don't know."

A spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration backed Sharon's version of events and also noted that Diamond ruled against Rubenstein in his portion of the case.

Judge Is Eyed In Conflict Of Invest

By Brad Hamilton and Dareh Gregorian
New York Post
June 6, 2003

A Manhattan Supreme Court justice, under investigation by the FBI for possible conflicts of interest, owns $40,000 of stock in J.P. Morgan Chase - yet has presided over civil cases involving the bank, The Post has learned.

Judge Marylin Diamond also owns corporate bonds with the bank, according to disclosure forms she filed with the court system's ethics commission.

And a state Board of Elections' disclosure in 2000 shows that Diamond's re-election campaign account was handled by Chase bank, a retail franchise within J.P. Morgan Chase. Diamond also has an IRA retirement account with J.P. Morgan Chase, the Board of Elections record shows.

Diamond has presided over at least six lawsuits that involved J.P. Morgan Chase since 2001, according to court records.

On May 5, Diamond recused herself in an ongoing case in which J.P. Morgan Chase is suing the owner of a Park Avenue building where it has a branch. At issue is the use of the building's elevators.

Prior to the recusal, Diamond had twice ruled in favor of the bank in the dispute - on Oct. 18, 2002, and on March 18 of this year, according to court records.

According to Diamond's attorney, Harold Tyler, Diamond recused herself after "recently" discovering her J.P. Morgan holdings.

``Diamond] and her law clerk were going over her accounts, and that's how she found out about" the holdings, Tyler said. "She has a discretionary portfolio with her accountant, which means he selects the stocks, she doesn't."

J.P. Morgan Chase is ranked in the top four biggest banking firms in the nation. The bank's spokeswoman, Kristin Lemkau, said she could not comment on any account holder or ongoing legal matters.

Tyler told The Post last week that the purchase price of Diamond's J.P. Morgan Chase stock was "about $40,000." He said he didn't know the stock's current value.

It's unclear when Diamond acquired the stock, but the bank is listed twice among 40 common stock entries on Diamond's disclosure forms for calendar year 2001.

The forms show that she's owned corporate bonds, issued through the bank's Chase Manhattan operation, since 1996. The value of the bonds is not listed.

The FBI probe into Diamond began in March after a group of disgruntled divorce litigants complained that Diamond's personal biases had swayed their cases.

One of those litigants, Anthony DeRosa, a researcher on Wall Street, provided federal agents with documents that he claims show conflict-of-interest violations by the judge.

DeRosa, who has acted as a spokesman for the group, was asked about Diamond's stock and bond holdings with the bank.

"We are not surprised by all the conflicts having to do with J.P. Morgan Chase," he said.

As The Post previously reported, Diamond is being sued for her role in handling the $400 million estate of Alzheimer's-stricken art heiress Natasha Gelman.

A cousin of Gelman claims in the suit that Diamond, and two other lawyers, used "undue influence" over the heiress to get control of the estate. Tyler previously denied any wrongdoing by Diamond in her work on the estate.

Judge Diamond in a Rough Spot

By John Lehmann and Dareh Gregorian
New York Post News
April 16, 2003

Relatives of art heiress Natasha Gelman ( husband Jacques, cousin-by-marriage Alice Jung and goddaughter Michelle Jung) say Marylin Diamond exercised "undue influence" to cut them from Natasha's will.

EXCLUSIVE

FBI investigators probing possible conflict-of-interest charges against a Manhattan Supreme Court justice are now reviewing the judge's role in a multimillion-dollar estate case, The Post has learned.

The new turn in the investigation has agents looking at Marylin Diamond's position as a trustee for the estate of Natasha Gelman, an art heiress who died in 1998 leaving behind a fortune estimated at well over $400 million and an ugly fight over the money, a source close to the case said.

Gelman's cousin, Jaroslav Jung, who's suing Diamond over the estate in Manhattan federal court, told The Post he met with two agents from the FBI's Corruption Squad for more than three hours on Friday.

"We met for many hours and it went very well," said Jung, 56. "They were
extremely interested in what we had to say." A law-enforcement source confirmed the meeting took place, but declined to elaborate.

The suit by Jung and his wife, Alice, charges that Diamond and two other lawyers used "undue influence" to take advantage of Gelman after the Alzheimer's-stricken heiress "was no longer of sound mind" for "the purpose of obtaining and consolidating [their] control over Mrs. Gelman's assets."

Two prior and related legal actions by the Jungs - one in Manhattan Surrogate's Court and one in arbitration in Lichtenstein - were unsuccessful, noted Diamond's lawyer, Paul Curran. He said he's moving to have the current action dismissed because the estate was left "the way Mrs. Gelman wanted it."

The FBI has been looking into Diamond since late last year because of information from "a dissatisfied litigant" charging she had an undisclosed conflict of interest in some bank cases over which she was presiding because her lawyer husband, retired state Supreme Court Justice Franklin Weissberg, now works for a law firm that did work for the bank, the source said.

Jung's meeting with the feds was arranged by Wall Street researcher Anthony DeRosa, who said he's spoken to investigators "several times" over the past few months and has given them numerous documents relating to the conflict-of-interest probe.

DeRosa is a member of the so-called "Diamond support group," a group of about 30 people, mostly men, who feel they've been treated unfairly by the judge.

DeRosa said he started looking into the judge's other cases because he felt she'd made several questionable rulings in his case, a civil action against JP Morgan Chase that he lost.

"I'm a big boy and I can handle losing, but her rulings made no sense to me at all. I do research and due diligence for a living, so instead of working on a company, I went to work on" the judge, DeRosa said.

Two other people told The Post they've been questioned by the FBI in the probe - DeRosa's lawyer, Tom Shanahan, and Gary Jacobs, a "Diamond support group" member who went through a bitter divorce proceeding before the judge.

Diamond's lawyer, retired federal court judge Harold Tyler, has denied there was any wrongdoing or conflict on the part of the judge or her husband. Asked about Jung's meeting with the investigators, he said, "I can't comment on the FBI. They don't let you know when they're doing these things."

Jung, who immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1968, has been sparring with Diamond and her two colleagues since Gelman, the widow of art-collecting movie producer Jacques Gelman, died in 1998.

Diamond was Natasha Gelman's lawyer until Diamond was elected to a judgeship in 1991, and her law partner took over the representation. Jung's suit claims that, between 1991 and 1998, Diamond and the two other lawyers got Gelman to sign over control of her estate to them, and that they proceeded to cut the Jung family, Gelman's closest relatives, out of the will and estate planning.

Gelman, the suit says, was diagnosed with "progressive Alzheimer's disease" in 1995 but was obviously suffering from the effects of disease as early as 1991.

Nevertheless, in 1997, Gelman allegedly put together new bylaws for a trust she created in 1993, and named Diamond and her law partner co-trustees.

The suit says that before the trio of attorneys started taking "unlawful advantage" of the kindly octogenarian, the Jungs stood to inherit $21 million. In the end, they were left a total of $10,000, Jung said.  Jaroslav's daughter Michelle - the Gelmans' goddaughter - was cut out completely, Jung said.

fiducary

Diamond, meanwhile, received $1.1 million, and gets an undisclosed amount
in fiduciary commissions, the suit says. The entire value of Gelman's estate is unclear. She left her $300 million art collection - including works by Bonnard, Matisse and Picasso - to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and her various trusts and foundations have been estimated to contain anywhere from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Diamond and the other lawyers are also being sued by the scientific Weizmann Institute, which was also cut out of Gelman's estate in the latter years of the widow's life. The institute claims it was cheated out of $11 million in a conspiracy, but it blames the other two lawyers for the "scheme to defraud," and not Diamond."No allegations of unlawful conduct herein are directed against Diamond,"that suit says.

Jung and his family had also challenged Gelman's 1993 will, charging she was suffering from Alzheimer's at the time it was put together, but Manhattan Surrogate Court Judge Eve Preminger dismissed that action in late 2001, finding Gelman "was in all respects competent to make a will, and not under restraint," and that Preminger was "satisfied of the genuineness of the will."

In that action, Diamond's law partner contended Gelman was "mentally fit" when she made the changes to her will, trust and foundation, and that the Jungs were the ones who were trying to take advantage of a woman who'd given them plenty of money during her lifetime.

Jaroslav Jung said the Gelmans did help support him and found him a job when he first arrived in the United States, and that they were very generous to him and his family over the years.

"They were always extremely kind to us," he said. "That's why I will never stop fighting for them."

                              Conduct unbecoming
                                    Judge Marylin Diamond

Daily News Editorial
April 4, 2003

The FBI's corruption unit is investigating Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond regarding conflicts of interest. The state Office of Court Administration has launched its own probe. And the state Commission on Judicial Conduct - supposed watchdog of the judiciary - what has it done? Dismissed more than a dozen complaints against the jurist. Dismissed them outright. Without so much as one interview with any of the complainants.

Want a clothespin? The stench is overwhelming. Whether it is from ethical gangrene or decomposition of a dead, nonfunctioning body has yet to be determined. But something is rotten in the State of New York. Perhaps the FBI should probe the panel, too.

The aforementioned complainants allege that, because of political or personal prejudice, Diamond had ruled against them in divorce cases. They brought their suspicions to the commission, which is supposed to investigate judicial abuses. Instead, it sent out form letters reporting that there was "insufficient indication of judicial misconduct." Of course there was. You can't find evidence if you don't look for it. Can you imagine if all investigations were conducted in this manner? Just a declaration that all is well?

Before this matter came to the public's attention, Diamond was already at the center of a bizarre case. She was, she claimed, the recipient of threatening letters. A criminal profiler and the police concluded that she wrote them herself. This page has called for her demotion to Civil Court pending resolution of the matter. That hasn't happened either. Nice to have friends in high places, isn't it? Nice to have a big supply of clothespins, too.

Cases vs. Diamond Dismissed

By Michele Mcphee
Daily News Police Bureau Chief
April 3, 2003

The Commission on Judicial Conduct has dismissed more than a dozen complaints against Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Marylin Diamond, even as the FBI opened a case into whether she engaged in potential conflicts of interest from the bench.

The commission, which is run by Gerald Stern, dismissed all of the complaints without contacting the people who wrote his agency letters. Instead, Stern's agency sent a form letter that read in part, "There was 'insufficient indication of judicial misconduct.'" Yesterday, Stern refused to comment. "I cannot discuss complaints as a matter of law," he said.

The commission had received letters from members of the Diamond Support Group, a group that says the judge ruled against them during their divorce cases because of political and personal vendettas. Diamond has denied the allegations.

Some of the men in the group also said they were questioned after Diamond began receiving a slew of threatening letters - missives that a criminal profiler and police believe the judge wrote herself to justify around-the-clock police protection.

The police never proved she wrote the letters, and Diamond has repeatedly denied she did so.

Last week, the Daily News reported that the FBI's corruption unit also has launched an investigation of Diamond. FBI agents met with some of the men in the Diamond Support Group, and have been poring through documents related to her cases.

Dismayed

Anthony DeRosa, a Wall Street researcher who has met with special agents dozens of times since the FBI probe into Diamond began in January, said he was "flabbergasted" that Stern dismissed their claims without an investigation.

"It's totally irresponsible," DeRosa said. "They never met with any of us. They never even called us. They just sent out form letters without any investigation whatsoever."

DeRosa also has been interviewed by Sherrill Spatz, the inspector general for the state Office of Court Administration - which has started its own investigation.

Tom Snowdon, a Park Avenue businessman who was followed by detectives after Diamond told cops he could have written threats against her, said he got an identical form letter from Stern's agency weeks after sending his written complaint.

"It's outrageous," Snowdon said. "This is allegedly the only place we have to turn to for an independent investigation, and we got no response at all."

FBI meeting set

Kenneth Zahl, another member of the Diamond Support Group, said he will meet with the FBI this week. Zahl had not sent the commission a letter, but will tell the FBI that Diamond engaged in a "series of bizarre rulings" during his 1998 divorce
case.

"The letters ... are not worth the paper they are written on," Zahl said. "Based upon their lack of action, it seems this agency is whitewashing every one of these complaints."

Court administration spokesman David Bookstaver, who spoke on behalf of Spatz and Diamond, would not discuss the case. "I don't discuss what Sherrill is looking at, whether it is about Diamond or any other judge," he said.

Diamond will not be removed from the bench, Bookstaver said. "There is a presumption of innocence," he said. "She has a constitutional right to continue to serve on the bench You wouldn't have disciplinary action because there is an alleged investigation."

F.B.I. Investigates Judge's Decisions for Defendant, Officials Say

By William K. Rashbaum
New York Times
March 29, 2003

The F.B.I. is investigating accusations that an acting State Supreme Court justice, in several civil cases in Manhattan, favored a defendant represented by the law firm where the judge's husband works, law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The investigation has focused on the role of the judge, Marylin G. Diamond, in cases involving J. P. Morgan Chase, which was recently represented in several matters by Morrison Cohen Singer & Weinstein of Manhattan, the officials and two people involved in cases before Justice Diamond said.

Her husband, Franklin R. Weissberg, a former state judge, is a lawyer at the firm. Justice Diamond's lawyer, Harold R. Tyler, a retired federal judge, said his client denied any wrongdoing. He said her husband had not worked on any cases involving J. P. Morgan and would not share in any income the cases generated. Justice Diamond has not been charged with any crime.

The accusations against her are being made by several litigants who say that she treated them unfairly and that they banded together because of their concerns. One of them, Anthony DeRosa, a researcher for a Wall Street firm, said he had been interviewed several times by the F.B.I. and had provided investigators with documents that supported the accusations, which were first reported yesterday in The Daily News.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. in New York, Joseph A. Valiquette, declined to comment. But a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed that F.B.I. agents had interviewed Mr. DeRosa and said the bureau has been investigating the judge for several months.

''We're taking it very seriously,'' the official said. Last fall, Justice Diamond defended herself against accusations that a series of threatening letters she had received were in fact written by herself. Her lawyer has denied that she wrote the letters.

After the letters were discovered, the Police Department for a time provided the judge with a security detail. The department conducted a lengthy investigation and determined that the threats had little validity.

Mr. DeRosa said he undertook a review of lawsuits before Justice Diamond and found that in all but one of 12 cases involving J. P. Morgan Chase, the disputes were resolved favorably for the firm. The one exception was a case brought by the State Department of Taxation and Finance for about $2,800, Mr. DeRosa said.

But Mr. Tyler, Justice Diamond's lawyer, said his review of the cases in Justice Diamond's docket found only six cases involving J. P. Morgan since September, when Morrison Cohen began doing work for the company. In one case, the action was discontinued, and in two others J. P. Morgan's opponents defaulted, he said. Of the three cases decided on the merits, J. P. Morgan won two and lost one, Mr. Tyler said.

A spokeswoman for J. P. Morgan, Kristin C. Lemkau, said the F.B.I. had not contacted the bank and that Morrison Cohen played a limited role representing the company on three financial transactions over the last two years, none of which involved any litigation.

David A. Scherl, vice chairman of Morrison Cohen, said Mr. Weissberg has no role representing J. P. Morgan for the law firm.

William K. Rashbaum
The New York Times Police Bureau
229 West 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036

Feds Probe NY Judge Diamond

The NY Judge Who Was Previously Accused
 Of Sending Herself Threatening Letters

New York Daily News 
Michele McPhee
New York Daily News 
March 28, 2003

The FBI has launched an investigation into Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond, focusing on possible conflict of interest from the bench, the Daily News has learned.

FBI Special Agent Matthew McPhillips has interviewed two men in the so-called Diamond Support Group, a cadre of 21 former litigants who say the judge ruled against them because of political alliances and personal vendettas - a claim the judge's lawyer has denied.

Separately, Sherrill Spatz, the inspector general for the state Office of Court Administration, also has opened a probe into Diamond's decisions, sources said.

Last year, The News reported that NYPD investigators suspected Diamond was sending herself threatening letters to justify an around-the-clock police detail, a theory bolstered by a respected criminal profiler.

Police were not able to prove their theory that Diamond wrote the letters, and her lawyer, retired Federal Judge Harold Tyler, denied she did so.

Now, McPhillips and the bureau's Corruption Unit are poring through piles of financial documents and decisions relating to Diamond and her cases, two law enforcement sources told The News.

Wall Street researcher and Diamond Support Group member Anthony DeRosa, 37, said he has been questioned by FBI agents dozens of times since January, when the investigation of Diamond began. DeRosa said he also has spoken to Spatz about the case.

"These agents are digging every day," he said. "This judge should be taken down."

DeRosa said FBI agents told him investigators are trying to determine whether there are any questionable ties between Diamond and JP Morgan Chase Bank - a banking giant the judge has ruled in favor of numerous times. DeRosa was a plaintiff in front of Diamond in a case involving the bank three years ago, and lost.

Diamond's husband, former state judge Franklin Weissberg, is an attorney with a firm that represents JP Morgan Chase, according to Diamond's lawyer.

DeRosa's lawyer, Tom Shanahan, also was questioned by the FBI, he said.

"I can say I answered their questions, but I've been asked not to discuss it," Shanahan said.

Tyler said he was shocked by news of the FBI probe.

"I am amazed. I am truly amazed. As if the FBI doesn't have better things to do right now," he said. "I'm speechless. I'm shocked."

Tyler said Diamond was not aware that her husband's firm did legal work for JP Morgan Chase.

"Judge Weissberg does not discuss the firm's clients with his wife," said Tyler, who pointed out that the FBI has not subpoenaed Diamond's files.

David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, would not comment on the FBI probe. He also refused to confirm that his agency is conducting an investigation.

FBI spokesman, Special Agent James Margolin, would not confirm or deny whether the agency is investigating Diamond.

But the FBI has interviewed at least one other litigant who had a case in front of Diamond and wants to talk to others - including a group of men whom she fingered as suspects behind the series of threatening missives she received.

"I got the sense the FBI was taking this very seriously and were asking me a lot about my lawyer, who also worked for Chase Bank," said Gary Jacobs, a Manhattan real estate broker interviewed by agents last month about his dealings with Diamond during his 1998 divorce. "My dealings with Judge Diamond were peculiar, to say the least, and I told them that. She demoralizes you."

Cop posed as waiter

The NYPD was so convinced Diamond was sending herself the bizarre letters that a detective posed as a waiter at her favorite upper East Side bistro to get her fingerprints. She was followed through the aisles of Saks Fifth Avenue by undercover cops.

A camera was positioned outside her home. Mail at the judge's upper East Side post office branch, and in the lower Manhattan courthouse where she worked, was searched for letters addressed to Diamond before it was sent out. A handwriting analyst compared her signature on court documents to scrawled words like "Die bitch."

Her garbage was routinely rifled through. She and her husband were followed to see whether they made "mail drops."

Diamond at one time handled high-profile divorce cases, including the breakups of billionaire tycoon Ron Perlman and art mogul Alex Wildenstein. In recent years, she has presided over general civil cases, Bookstaver said.

Tom Snowdon, a Park Ave. businessman who claims he was ruined financially by Diamond's rulings during his divorce from fashion designer Cathy Hardwick, said he was relieved the judge was under scrutiny.

Snowdon, a Diamond Support Group member, said he was tailed and questioned by detectives after Diamond suggested he wrote the threatening letters.

"I think she's quite corrupt, and I'm grateful something might be done about it," Snowdon said.

      Judge Accused Of Sending Herself Threatening Letters

6 Men Targeting Judge-Say She Ruined
Them Accused Them in Hate-mail Ruse

By Michele McPhee
Daily News Staff Writer
November 12, 2002divorce cases  Diamond afraid

Judge Marylin Diamond.   A wealthy New York City contractor. A Park Ave. businessman. A high-profile investment banker. A former talent scout from California. A prominent New Jersey doctor. A Putnam County architect.

They call themselves the Diamond Support Group and have one objective: to get Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond thrown off the bench.

The six men say Diamond ruined them financially during their divorce cases - and then fingered them as possible stalkers who had sent a slew of threatening letters over three years.

The NYPD closed a two-year investigation into the alleged threats after a criminal profiler told cops he believed Diamond wrote the letters herself.

Now the six men, who have been cleared as suspects, want the state Commission on Judicial Conduct to investigate her. They say they're also considering filing a civil suit against Diamond - charging she slandered them.

"We want to band together and get her off the bench, so she doesn't do it to someone else," said Neil Eversole, a former talent scout who now lives in California. "It has been heartening to speak to these other men, because people just don't believe a judge could do what Diamond did - accuse me of a crime, send detectives to my house and then bankrupt me. This judge has so much power to affect your life, she can destroy you - and she will."

Diamond turned over a list of about 20 men to investigators shortly after the letters began arriving in 1999, saying the litigants were potential suspects with possible motives to write menacing phrases such as, "Die Bitch."

Eversol said detectives came to his Sutton Place apartment numerous times during his divorce from a Manhattan bank executive.

Architect Ralph Brill said he was photographed by detectives in Diamond's courtroom during his divorce case.

Park Ave. businessman Tom Snowdon was followed by NYPD detectives for weeks during his high-profile divorce from fashion designer Cathy Hardwick.

The others did not want their names used, fearing that going public could affect their appeals of Diamond's rulings.

"Now that I have talked to a number of other people she accused, it's mind-boggling how apparently crazy she has been on the bench, and how long she has gotten away with it," Snowdon said.

"We've all been terribly beaten up and abused by her," Brill said. "It's been high drama all the way through with her." They've written letters to Gerald Stern, the administrator of the commission, demanding an investigation into Diamond's actions.

Stern refused to comment about a possible probe when contacted by the Daily News.

Seeking others

Brill also has filed a Freedom of Information request to get the names of other people on Diamond's list - so he can reach out to them to join a possible civil suit.

Diamond was shadowed by security, primarily state court officers, for three years because of the series of threatening letters she reported receiving.

Detectives from the threat assessment unit, part of the NYPD's elite Intelligence Division, tried to determine who was writing the hate mail.

The leads turned up nothing, so investigators turned to Ray Pierce, an FBI profiler and retired NYPD detective. Last month, The News reported that Pierce had concluded the 61-year-old jurist was behind the threats.

'Pig in a poke'

Cops have no hard evidence linking Diamond to the letters, and she has denied writing the bizarre rants, said her lawyer, former federal Judge Harold Tyler.

Tyler also defended Diamond's list of suspects, dismissing the group's complaints and its threat of a civil suit as "a large pig in a poke."

"The police said to Judge Diamond they wanted to get names of litigants so they could perhaps corroborate whether someone was guilty of sending the notes," Tyler said. "It is still legal for citizens to cooperate with the police."

Tyler, who was hired by Diamond after The News' stories appeared, also scoffed at Pierce's findings.

"The police have been investigating this for over three years, and there is nothing to this charge that she is writing notes to herself," he said.

Tyler added that Diamond's security detail has ended.

But that's not enough for one Manhattan lawyer, who also was questioned by investigators and is considering joining the Diamond Support Group.

"She has destroyed lives," said the lawyer, who asked not to be named because he is embroiled in a custody battle in front of another Manhattan matrimonial judge. "Some of these guys will never make a comeback."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/34787p-32894c.html

                             Accused Judge Backed

By Greg Gittrich
Daily News
September 16, 2002

One of the state's top judicial officials rallied to the defense yesterday of a Manhattan judge accused of sending herself bogus death threats to get 24-hour security protection.

Supreme Court Justice Jacqueline Silbermann said a criminal profiler's contention that Acting Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond made up the threats was "preposterous."

"She is a terrific judge," said Silbermann, the state's chief administrative judge for matrimonial matters and the administrative judge of the civil division of Manhattan Supreme Court. "It's preposterous."

Several high-profile lawyers who have argued cases in front of Diamond agreed. But other prominent Manhattan lawyers questioned whether Diamond's security detail was necessary.

Diamond, who has presided over many bitter marital breakups, first reported receiving threatening letters three years ago.

When NYPD investigators were unable to find the culprits or even a possible motive, they asked Ray Pierce, a retired detective and founder of the department's criminal assessment and profiling unit, for help, sources said.

Pierce, now a private criminal profiler, reviewed 48 letters and told investigators he has "no doubt" Diamond wrote them herself, sources said.

Pierce pointed out that the threats would intensify when there was talk about canceling her security detail, sources said.

Gerald Stern, counsel for the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, would not say yesterday if Diamond would be investigated. "I just learned about it," he said. "It is premature."

'Irresponsible'

Diamond has vehemently denied being the source of the letters.

Lawyer Bernard Clair, who represented Jocelyne Wildenstein during her divorce from her billionaire husband, Alec, in Diamond's courtroom, called the profiler's accusations "irresponsible."

"There are a lot of cowardly husbands out there who are not used to a woman who stands up to them publicly and without hesitation," Clair said. "Any one of those idiots could be writing those notes."

Attorney Suzanne Bracker said one of her clients was investigated for sending the threats. "I can't imagine [Diamond] would do something like this," Bracker said.

But famed divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, who represented Alec Wildenstein and has had several run-ins with Diamond, questioned why she needed the armed security detail around the clock.

"She came to my office with security," Felder said, referring to a visit last year. "I was taken aback. ... No one in my office presented a danger to her."

Other lawyers, who asked not to be named, called Diamond insecure, unpredictable and egotistical.

But Silbermann, Diamond's immediate supervisor, said, "She is as mature and balanced as any person I've ever met."

Diamond's security detail was lifted the same day the Daily News contacted the NYPD and the state Office of Court Administration about the case.

Law enforcement sources said they can't prove Diamond concocted the threats. A handwriting analysis failed to link her to the letters, although sources said police are trying to bolster Pierce's theory.

               Jewess Judge Diamond Writes Anti-Semitic
           Threats To Herself the Judge's Mysterious Letters

By Michele Mcphee
New York Daily News
Daily News Police Bureau Chief
Saturday, September 14th, 2002 Wrote letters

A criminal profiler who analyzed threatening letters sent to a Manhattan judge has concluded that the judge wrote them herself, the Daily News has learned. Since Acting Supreme Court Justice Marylin Diamond reported the first of the bizarre threats three years ago, she has been guarded virtually around-the-clock by NYPD detectives or Supreme Court officers, according to law enforcement sources.

They escorted Diamond from her upper East Side home to the courthouse in lower Manhattan and from there to her weekend home in Westport, Conn., the sources said.

They guarded her at hairdressing appointments, lunch dates, and social functions - until last week, when her armed security detail was lifted the same day the Daily News contacted the NYPD and the state Office of Court Administration about the case.

"She needed to justify her security detail, so she was writing the letters to herself," one law enforcement source told The News. "It's a crazy case. Detectives were trying to determine who was sending her the letters, and everything was coming back to her."

Reached Thursday at Manhattan Supreme Court, Diamond expressed shock when told of the profiler's findings, then declined further comment.

Later that day, she told the NYPD that two additional letters were sent to her chambers with 9/11-related threats, sources said.

On Friday, Diamond denied she was the source of the letters.

"To allege that I was the one making these threats is totally incorrect and grossly irresponsible," Diamond said in a statement released through David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration.

Husband a judge

The 61-year-old jurist, a graduate of New York University and St. John's Law School, is one of the city's few Republican judges. She was elected to New York City Civil Court in 1990 and appointed an acting state Supreme Court justice four years later.

There, she joined her husband, Franklin Weissberg, a longtime state judge who has since retired from the bench.
For years, Diamond handled divorces, many of them high-profile cases, including that of Jocelyne Wildenstein and her billionaire husband, art dealer Alec Wildenstein.

Last October, she was presiding over the bitter breakup of wealthy investment banker Theodore Ammon and his wife, Generosa, when Theodore Ammon was found beaten to death in his East Hampton, L.I., home.

According to law enforcement sources, when Diamond began receiving the letters in 1999, the case was assigned to the threat assessment unit, part of the NYPD's elite Intelligence Division. Detectives began poring through the judge's case files.

But when investigators became stumped about a possible motive for the letters, they called in Ray Pierce, a retired detective and founder of the NYPD's criminal assessment and profiling unit, the sources said.

Pierce, who was trained as a psychological profiler by the FBI, reviewed 48 letters, typed as well as handwritten. Most were mailed to Diamond at her chambers, though some were sent to her Manhattan home.

Anti-Semitic

In some of the letters, the writer called her a "pig," the sources said. Others were anti-Semitic. Some featured a roughly scrawled heart with a dagger drawn through it. All of them threatened her life.

One of the first letters to arrive in 1999 read: "You bitch. I see you every day on the train. I'm going to ... crucify you. Maybe I'll see you in hell."

Pierce told investigators he has "no doubt" Diamond was writing the letters herself, the sources said.
Anthrax
They said he reached that conclusion by considering a combination of factors: A barrage of letters would come when there was talk of her security detail ending, or during times of terror alerts. After last Sept. 11, for example, Diamond received a letter containing baby powder during the anthrax scare. Pierce also found the letters were written by an "insecure woman," according to sources.

"She has a serious problem. She thrives on attention. She had a security escort to her daughter's wedding, she's very impressed with that," Pierce told investigators, according to one source familiar with his findings.

"There was a vicious theme in all of the letters, but an obvious failure on the part of the person sending them to act. It became obvious after a while it was just a farce," Pierce concluded, according to the source.
Pierce himself declined to comment on the case.

Michael O'Looney, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of public information, also declined comment on the case.

'Credible threats'
24hr_three years
Bookstaver defended Diamond's need for security, but would not discuss the cost to taxpayers for three years of 24-hour-a-day protection.

"We do not discuss judicial security. Discussing that may put someone's life in danger," Bookstaver said. "There were persistent, credible, serious threats made against her that were taken seriously, not only by the court system, but by the NYPD."

Diamond is not the only judge who has needed armed guards. For years, the NYPD and court officers have protected Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Leslie Crocker Snyder, who has been threatened by murderous drug gangs. Another state Supreme Court justice, Ira Gammerman, got a security detail when his name turned up on what he was told was a "hit list" allegedly compiled by parking garage magnate Abe Hirschfeld.

Nor is this Diamond's first brush with controversy. In the summer of 2000, the heirs of a wealthy Mexican art collector accused Diamond of using "undue influence" to gain control of the elderly woman's $21 million trust fund. Diamond said she was wrongly accused and a suit filed by the heirs was later thrown out of court.

Her judicial record contains a number of notable decisions, including those in the Wildenstein case and rulings that backed the city's efforts to close sex shops and keep the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association from taking contract disputes to arbitration.

No DNA evidence

For the moment, it seems unlikely Diamond, even if she is the author of the threatening letters, will face any criminal charges. Right now, law enforcement can't prove it, though sources say investigators are hard at work trying to bolster Pierce's theory.

There is no DNA evidence tying her to the missives, and a handwriting analysis also failed to link Diamond to the threats.

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