THIS JUST IN: BROOKLYN POWER PLAYER SET FOR JUDGESHIP 
It’s judicial campaign season again, and The Village Voice’s Tom Robbins weighs in with a disturbing — and rare, given the public apathy towards judicial elections — profile of Brooklyn political lifer Noach Dear. He's in the midst of a likely victorious run for Brooklyn Civil Court. According to Robbins, Dear, an 18-year City Counsel member with two failed Congressional bids under his belt, has a dubious look-the-other-way record on community and consumer crime. The story also says he's twice made questionable, privately-funded “civil rights” missions overseas, committed possible campaign fraud, and relies heavily for fundraising on his connections at the Taxi and Limousine Commission, where he is a commissioner. In other words, given the Brooklyn bench’s recent history, he seems like a pretty good fit. At least the word’s out early.

OPENING THE FLOODGATES 
Newsday runs a short piece on a story that’s bound to spread, about the dismissal of at least one, and up to 35, indictments in Nassau County due to improper grand jury instructions given by Grand Jury Bureau Chief Donald Berk. Last March, Nassau County Court Judge Frank Gulotta, Jr., dismissed 26 criminal indictments, ruling that Berk improperly charged the grand jury. And last week, Acting State Supreme Court Justice Alan Honorof dismissed the robbery case against Gillian Dobbins for similar reasons, putting a slew of other indictments at risk.

STEINBERG'S PRO SE SHOT 
The New York Law Journal reports on Joel Steinberg, the notorious former New York defense attorney convicted of manslaughter in the death of a six-year-old girl he illegally adopted and allegedly abused before she died of an untreated head wound. Steinberg has asked the Court of Appeals to throw out the $15 million judgment against him. It was awarded to the girl’s mother and upheld in January by the Appellate Division. Steinberg is challenging Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Louis B. York’s 2004 decision to award Lisa Steinberg's estate $5 million for the pain and suffering she endured on the night of her death, $5 million for her pain and suffering as a battered child, and $5 million in punitive damages. Steinberg, who is appearing pro se and was buoyed by dissents from Justices Richard T. Andrias and James M. McGuire in the Appellate verdict, says the award for damages was excessive for what was "at most eight hours of pain and suffering."

PHILLIPS GETS HIS DUE 
Finally, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports that the guardianship battle involving the estate of retired Civil Court Judge John Phillips, a pox hanging over the Brooklyn Supreme Court, has finally produced some good news: the two historic movie theaters the judge previously owned, which disappeared from his estate under the stewardship of former property guardians, have been restored to him. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Michael Pesce invalidated the sales of both the Slave “One” Theatre and the Slave “Two,” a.k.a. Black Lady, because they were conducted through improper third party “straw man” arrangements. Next up: unveiling why Phillips’s former guardians failed to pay his property taxes for six years.