Judicial Reports: LexPress: Rather, Redstone, and Righteous Railing

By Jesse Sunenblick
jsunenblick@judicialstudies.com
Posted: 04-11-08

After multiple dismissals by Judge Ira Gammerman, has the heart really been cut from the Dan Rather lawsuit? And what happens when a judge "patriotically" dismisses a speeding ticket for the wife of a soldier in Iraq?

WHAT IS THE ESSENCE?
The New York Times reports on Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman’s dismissal yesterday of four of the seven complaints in Dan Rather’s lawsuit against CBS. It has been widely reported that the dismissals cut the heart out of the lawsuit. However, a reading of Gammerman’s decision — which most media neglected to read before quoting CBS’s attorneys that the case had been reduced to “a garden variety contract dispute” —shows that Gammerman only dismissed Rather’s fraud claim because he found it “redundant” to the breech of contract dispute. And the dismissal of Sumner Redstone and other individual executives as defendants in the case does not, at first blush, appear to impact Rather’s ability to make his case. The Times presents the most even-handed account, including a quote from Rather’s attorney, Martin Gold, that Gammerman’s decision “leaves in place the entire essence of Mr. Rather’s lawsuit.”

KAYE VERSUS SILVER = MASS RECUSALS? 
Yesterday, we whetted your appetite with early news of Judith Kaye’s plan to sue New York State over the stalled judicial pay raise legislation. Today The New York Times and The Albany Times Union, among others, weigh in on the story. While The Times examines the rarity and historical precedents of such a suit, the Times Union ponders how a trial would impact other judges presiding over cases involving defendant and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg. “Since he’s [Silver] a named party . . . who can preside over any of the cases in which his firm is involved? Every single judge in the state has an interest in Kaye versus Silver . . . so every judge in the state would have to recuse (himself),” said Albany Law School professor Vincent Bonventre.

DOUBLY DISTURBING 
In an interesting opinion piece, The Times rails against Manhattan Criminal Court Larry Stephen’s decision earlier this week to dismiss assault and disorderly conduct charges against noted Long Island Rail Road etiquette vigilante John Clifford. Clifford has been arrested repeatedly for his antics, which in the most recent case included slapping a woman who intervened in an argument he was having with a rude cell phone user. “Do I admit to being domineering?” Clifford said in court. “Yeah.” Opines the Times: "The judicial system also needs to recognize that harassing and threatening behavior like that repeatedly displayed by Mr. Clifford is not only wrong, it could be downright dangerous. That isn’t an ax to grind; it is just common sense.”

PEACE AND MILITANCY  
With a verdict imminent in the Sean Bell murder trial, Mayor Bloomberg met with black leaders in Queens yesterday to discuss the need for leadership in the wake of a decision. The New York Sun has the story. “If there is no justice, then we absolutely will be calling for a peaceful, law abiding, responsible, but militant demonstration,” said James Sanders, a Queens City Councilman, after meeting with the mayor. Added Bloomberg: “My expectation is that no matter what the decision is, everybody will act in a dignified, appropriate manner no matter what they think, and understand that this is a country of laws and that we have to make sure that we work within the law.” Also yesterday, as reported by The Daily News, the judge in the case, Arthur Cooperman, refused a defense request to dismiss charges against the three detectives being tried for murder in the case. “We know that in 99 percent of the cases, these trial orders of dismissal are denied,” conceded defense lawyer Steven Kartagener. “But we still make it.”

NEW MANN
The Sun reports that former Governor Eliot Spitzer should keep an eye on the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. Yesterday that federal judge said that the century-old anti-prosecution law, the Mann Act, still had a useful purpose in prostitution trials. "[A]nyone who did this in the United States of America — that is create a brothel for the purpose of which was to attract women from abroad to come here — was violating the law and deserves punishment," he told a defense attorney who was defending a woman convicted of participating in a prostitution ring. According to the paper, legal experts are speculating the Mann Act could be used in the prosecution of cases involving the high-priced prostitution ring that the former governor allegedly frequented.

 
THE PATRIOTIC JUDGE
Finally, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports on the Commission for Judicial Conduct’s censure of Farmington Town Justice Morris H. Lew, for dismissing a speeding ticket of a friend whose husband is in the Army serving in Iraq. Lew had argued that the trooper who wrote the ticket dismissed it without his knowledge. The commission saw things otherwise: Lew allegedly steered the case to his court after receiving an email from the offender’s husband, and after dismissing the ticket sent the soldier an email which read “Please consider it a very small token of thanks for your efforts in uniform.”

Posted by Jesse on April 11, 2008 08:58 AM to Judicial Reports