Judicial Reports: LexPress: Salary Suit?

By Jason Boog
Posted 04-10-07

The chief judge says remuneration litigation might be in New York's future, an Indiana girl wins prevails on a MySpace-MySpeech claim, and a student is a stripper.  

 

SOLON SALARY SURGE
New York judges went on the offensive yesterday, as Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye demanded higher salaries for the judiciary in a speech. According to The New York Law Journal, the chief judge will lead a 10-week legislative push with lobbyists, angered that the state Legislature canceled a judicial pay raise as they finalized the budget last week. Kaye noted that she and Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman would fight for a spot at the bargaining table, rather than let the state Legislature handle salary negotiations behind closed doors. Her speech also alluded to the threat of litigation, noting that the state judges are “seriously considering” suing for a pay raise. "Unless we're on very, very solid ground, that . . . could backfire," Judge Kaye told reporters. "I am loathe to take that step."

MYSPEECH
Twenty-first century case law took a new turn in the Indiana Court of Appeals, as a three-judge appellate panel ruled that a girl’s angry, obscene MySpace posting about her principal was indeed protected speech. The New York Times reports how the girl received probation form an Indiana juvenile court after she was caught publishing bitter comments on another person’s MySpace page. The appellate judges overturned that sentence, citing the First Amendment. Prosecutors had pushed to try the girl as an adult, hoping to charge the girl with identity theft and harassment. The juvenile court ruled that the girl should be tried as a delinquent before sentencing her to nine months probation. Appellate Judge Patricia Riley wrote for the panel: “While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech.”

NAKED JUSTICE
The whole New York law community is buzzing about a law student who performed a judicial striptease for a Playboy television show. Third-year Brooklyn Law School student Adriana Dominguez stripped for the “Rock Star and the Lawyer” episode where she is spanked and waves a gavel between her bare breasts. The New York Daily News gleefully noted: “in the past three weeks, a 45-second clip spread on the Internet among students and some faculty at almost every New York law school.” Dominguez had a stressful meeting with the law school dean yesterday, and the Daily News also speculated that the New York State Bar Committee on Character and Fitness would not look fondly at this naked video.

THREAT SCRUTINY
The criss-crossed jurisdictions of a Queens murder got even more tangled yesterday as prosecutors told a Brooklyn judge that an accused killer is still making threatening phone calls to the families of his alleged victims. Hemant Megnath stands accused of murdering a girl who had accused him of raping her. Megnath was arrested for allegedly raping Natasha Ramen in his Brooklyn home, and while that case was underway, allegedly made threats against the girl’s family. He now has been arrested for Ramen’s murder, a crime that occurred in Queens while Megnath was out on bail from the Brooklyn courts. Yesterday, Brooklyn prosecutors reported the new threats allegedly being made by Megnath, but the New York Post thinks prosecutors “goofed,” noting: “After Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Joel Goldberg asked prosecutors if a Queens judge was aware of the latest set of alleged phone calls, [the prosecutor] said she believed the judge had been informed. In fact, there was no mention of the matter at Megnath's court appearance in Queens last week.”

Posted by Jason on April 10, 2007 09:32 AM to Judicial Reports