JUDGE SUES DAILY NEWS
A complicated series of events has led Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Larry D. Martin to sue The Daily News and an attorney who he says provided false information to the tabloid. Marin claims the information led to a column wrongly accusing the judge of presiding over a case involving a lawyer who had defended him before the Commission on Judicial Conduct. The $10 million suit hinges on the relationship between Martin and attorney Ravi Batra, who Martin says “requested and urged” Daily News columnist Errol Louis to publish “defamatory statements” about him. He claims the articles were “outrageous, grossly irresponsible, malicious and evinced a complete and utter indifference” to his “rights and reputation.” The New York Law Journal has the story.

JACK JORDAN'S LOST LOVE
From The New York Times comes word that a Manhattan jury has convicted a man of stalking and aggravated harassment for his unusual obsession with the actress Uma Thurman. Jack Jordan faces a little over a year in prison for the crime. “Dear Uma, I love you completely. . . . I’ll spend the night in front of #16. I’ll buzz you again in the a.m. before going to do laundry,” read a letter Jordan stuffed in Thurman’s mailbox after traveling from Chicago to find her home.

ON SECOND THOUGHT, I SAW NOTHING 
Nassau County Court Judge Jerald S. Carter will decide whether a drug dealer’s recanted eye witness testimony of a fatal robbery gone wrong should clear one man implicated in the crime, Newsday reports. In July 2006, a Nassau jury convicted Terrell Clinkscaleas of killing an El Salvadorian immigrant based largely on testimony from Dennis Foster. But months later Foster recanted his testimony, saying he made it up to protect himself from his own legal troubles. (“I figured I would make up something so I could get myself out of the situation I was in,” he says.) Though the conviction was subsequently thrown out, the matter now goes before Judge Carter, who will decide whether to uphold it or order a new trial. The prosecutor in the case, for one, thinks Foster knows too many details about the case to have invented his story, and changed his tune because he fears retaliation or wants to regain the respect of his peers.

EQUIPMENT LEASING COMPANY ON THE HOOK
Finally, The Staten Island Advance, via an Associated Press thread, reports that the New York State Court of Appeals has refused to dismiss fraud claims against Northern Leasing Systems, an equipment leasing company accused of hiding over $180 million in overcharges for insurance waivers on office equipment over the last decade. The case now returns to Manhattan Supreme Court, where a judge will decided whether to classify it as a class action (there would be over 700,000 plaintiffs). “Since there is no basis for thinking that NLS supervised or instructed the salespeople [to mislead customers about contract terms], I do not see how it, or its officers, can be blamed for any trickery in which the salespeople engaged,” wrote Judge Robert Smith in dissent.