ANOTHER PAY RAISE PROPOSAL 
Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye has offered a new judicial pay raise proposal to the State Legislature, The New York Law Journal reports. The legislation would provide for raises retroactive to January 1, 2007, whereas previous proposals asked for retroactivity to April 1, 2005 — a major sticking point as the quagmire drags on. Additionally, the salaries for state Supreme Court justices would rise from $136,700 to $165,200, the current salary of federal District Court judges. “For us, this is our total priority legislation,” said Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau. “Time can’t pass. This has to be done now. We are in our tenth year without a salary increase, longer than judges in any state in the country. When adjusted for cost of living, our judges’ salaries are second to last in the country.”

HIDING THE STEWARDESSES 
The New York Law Journal reports on the Appellate Division’s chastisement of the Bronx District Attorney’s office for withholding evidence in a second-degree kidnapping trial. The panel upheld trial judge Steven Lloyd Barrett’s decision to vacate the convictions of Pedro Garcia and his wife, Betzayda Melendez - who were charged with forcing a 13-year-old girl to board a flight to Puerto Rico - writing that “the prosecution willfully suppressed evidence, in their possession, from flight attendants that contradicted the complainant’s claim that she created a disturbance and vociferously protested to the attendants that she was being taken against her will by defendant Melendez on a flight to Puerto Rico.” The panel said, “[I]t is disquieting that the People’s brief refers to this failure to disclose ‘an arguable lapse of preferred practice.’ This was a flagrant violation by the prosecutor of his constitutional and ethical obligations.” In an e-mailed statement yesterday, Bronx DA Robert T. Johnson said, “While we certainly agree that all of the details should have been turned over, it is significant that the names of the airline witnesses were disclosed to, known to, and available to the defense.”

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE 
In the most creative, if not the most lucrative, insider trading scandal of recent years, 28-year-old Goldman Sachs associate and Harvard grad Eugene Plotkin was sentenced in a plea bargain to 57 in prison by Southern District Judge Richard Holwell. Plotkin faced 165 years if he stood trial, reports Reuters. “I am ashamed and deeply sorry for what I did,” Plotkin told Howell. What he did, to the tune of $6 million in ill-gotten gains, was meet Merrill Lynch analyst Stanislav Shpigelman at a Manhattan Russian day spa (Plotkin is Russian) to discuss information on coming mergers, including Adidas-Salomon’s acquisition of Reebok International. He also persuaded men to work at a BusinessWeek printing plant in Wisconsin to acquire information before the magazine went to press.

DOPP'S DIARY 
What would the New Year be without a little Troopergate? The New York Times reports that Albany County Supreme Court Justice Michael C. Lynch has ruled that the State Commission on Public Integrity can continue its investigation of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, alongside a separate criminal investigation by Albany County DA P. David Soares. (Lynch did say he would consider the motion to block the investigation.) The commission recently subpoenaed a diary kept by Dopp that has already been turned over to Soares; it maintains that Dopp contradicted himself in testimony to Soares and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Said Dopp’s attorney, Michael Koenig, “Until the District Attorney completes his investigation, I believe it is inappropriate for other investigations that could influence or prejudice the District Attorney’s investigation to continue.”

WEEDING OUT 
Southern District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has laid out new groundrules in the Ground Zero suits, giving  thousands of plaintiffs, who allege their cleanup work at Ground Zero made them sick, seven months to answer a series of questions about their duties, health history, and injuries being claimed. Newsday has the story. The judge will then decide which workers’ suits can proceed against the city. There are about 10,000 respiratory injury-related individual lawsuits.