MINIMAL INTEREST 
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver struck back verbally yesterday at judges who have threatened to slow down or recuse themselves from cases involving Weitz & Luxenberg, the Manhattan law firm where he is of counsel. At issue is the ongoing judicial pay raise litigation, in which Silver is a defendant. “They don't realize I have no interest in the firm, so they're not hurting me personally,” Silver told The Daily News. “I have no interest in litigation. The only interest I have is in what I bring in [through case referrals], which is very minimal.” Responding to reports that one Upstate pay raise advocate, Democratic Cattaraugus County Judge Larry Himelein, had called him “a slug,” Silver said, “I don't know who the guy is. I question if that’s the way he speaks in public whether he belongs on the bench. But that’s his problem, not mine.”

DEATH THREAT FOR JOHNSON
The Daily News also reports that Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court Judge Diana Johnson, who earlier this year was the target of racist graffiti, has received a death threat. It came in the form of a note created from cutout magazine letters glued onto a sheet of paper, and target both the judge and her son, an attorney in Queens. “These two hate crimes aren’t a coincidence,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a rally Saturday at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights. “There is no way you can’t put these two incidents together.” Added City Councilwoman Letitia James: “I am demanding security for this fine woman whose family is under threat. If the judge in the Sean Bell case can get security, then Judge Johnson should get security, too.”

"THE WIRE," KIND OF
Over the weekend, The New York Times reported on Southern District Judge Loretta A. Preska’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed against the Metropolitan Transit Authority by the agency’s disgruntled former security director. Louis R. Anemone alleged the MTA fired him in 2003 after he threatened to expose corruption in the agency. He had been pursuing corruption investigations involving bid-rigging, cost overruns, and payoffs by administrators and contractors, though the MTA alleged it was rogue detective work. In her ruling, Preska said that Anemone had “a long history of disruptive and insubordinate behavior,” and that “no reasonable jury could conclude that plaintiff was terminated for an impermissible reason. . . . The turf wars, lies, leaks to the press, and bureaucracy giving rise to this lawsuit read more like the script to an episode of ‘The Wire’ than the real life inner workings of an organization with an operating budget of over $10 billion and an average weekday ridership of over eight million people.” Countered Anemone: “Reasonable people can differ. In this case, I beg to differ with the judge on her interpretation. We’ll have to let an appellate panel see if they agree or disagree.”

LOST SOUL
Finally, The New York Law Journal recounts the sordid last minutes and posthumous humiliation of once-famed playwright Leonard Melfi. After he died of congestive heart failure, Mount Sinai Hospital failed to transfer his personal information onto a death certificate or contact his next of kin, and Melfi’s body went unclaimed for a month. After students from the Nassau County Community College used it to practice embalming, the body was buried in a common grave at Potter’s Field. Last week, Acting Supreme Court Justice Joan B. Carey allowed Melfi’s family to seek punitive damages against Mount Sinai and Bellevue Hospital (which runs the city morgue), writing that Mount Sinai “. . . not only stripped him of his identity, but facilitated the unfortunate chain of events that were yet to unfold."