SIX MINUTES IS A LIFETIME
Unsatisfied with a compromise plan that would salvage about half of the 50 or so parking spaces reserved for judges in Columbus Park, near the Brooklyn Supreme Court, a group of judges has vowed to sue the city to keep the controversial perk. The Daily News has the story. The move has angered local leaders, who say the judges promised to stop parking in the park after a garage was constructed alongside the new criminal and family courthouse at 330 Jay Street. (But the garage, which opened in 2005, doesn’t accommodate all the city’s judges.) “For judges to sue the city to keep their illegal parking perk goes beyond hypocrisy,” said Transportation Alternatives spokesman Wiley Norvell. “It’s a park. This is an insult to the people they are supposed to serve.” While Brooklyn Civil Court Judge Herbert Kramer admitted that he could park in the garage rather than Columbus Park, he bemoaned the additional six minute commute to the old courthouse. “This is no perk; this is a security issue,” said Kramer, who indicated that a lawsuit would seek to expand the Columbus Park lot. “This is a land grab. They took it away and don’t say anything to anyone, and we want it back.”

11 MONTHS AND COUNTING 
The Buffalo News reports that 11 months after Erie County Supreme Court Justice Amy J. Fricano was acquitted of impaired driving charges, she is still on medical leave for unspecified reasons and has yet to resume hearing cases. “Her medical leave is not indefinite,” said OCA spokesman David Bookstaver. “The matter will come to some sort of conclusion in the near future.” Meanwhile, Fricano’s attorney, Joel L. Daniels, called that statement premature. “I wish her the best and hope she comes back soon. We could use her,” said State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch, Sr., the supervising judge for the criminal courts in Western New York.

PLAYING BOTH SIDES
The New York Law Journal reports on a ruling by Westchester County Supreme Court Justice Sam D. Walker that an attorney cannot defend both a defendant in a domestic violence case and the defendant’s alleged victim in a related lawsuit. The second case involves claims against a prosecutor whom the plaintiff says coerced her into providing evidence in the underlying case. In the original matter, Ralph Tancredi, a suspended Harrison police officer and former head of its patrolmen's union, is charged with domestic abuse for stalking his ex-girlfriend. The woman claims she was detained several times by the Harrison police and forced, under the threat of deportation, to offer evidence against Tancredi. “It is clear that defense counsel has an ethical obligation to avoid conflicting representations and to notify the court if such a conflict occurs during the course of a trial. Given the facts presented, it is practically guaranteed that should the victim testify at trial defense counsel would be placed in the irregular position of having to cross examine his own client," Justice Walker wrote.

OLD MASTERS, NEW WORRIES 
Finally, Conde Nast Portfolio has a long feature about the legal troubles facing renowned Manhattan gallery owner Larry Salander. Salander is being sued by a variety of wealthy art collectors for a stunning assortment of fraud charges. The alleged frauds came to light prior to the opening of a subsequently canceled Renaissance art show in 2007 that was to have been Salander's crowning achievement. More than $100 million in art, bank loans, and client investments appear to have disappeared, a scandal that has rocked the art world and could possibly lead to a criminal indictment. As Porfolio puts it, “The question that mystifies is not just how Salander got himself into so much trouble, but why? What caused a man who had achieved so much to risk everything he had worked so hard to create, ‘to destroy,’ as one of his artists says, ‘everything that he loved?’ ”