SUIT SURRENDER?
The Daily News wants Mayor Bloomberg to act more like U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. In its editorial today the paper says Hellerstein’s decision Tuesday to allow suits filed by first responders who became ill from fallout at ground zero brought Bloomberg’s administration to a crossroads in how it will handle payouts to the ill workers. The paper urges the administration to reconsider its obstinancy: “Waging hand-to-hand legal combat would guarantee that nothing gets accomplished in good time or according to sound public policy. The far better course . . . would be to remove the matter from the courts entirely by adopting no-fault compensation: Individuals who proved they were injured because they served at Ground Zero would be issued checks expeditiously, with the amounts set by specified guidelines.”

RULE 35, RULE 35 — HIKE!
Jerry Capeci has penned one of the more unusual (and confusing) stories you’ll ever read about the Super Bowl and Rule 35 reductions. He writes a long column in the New York Sun detailing the unique way that mob associate Burton Kaplan got a very sweet sentencing deal. The obvious thing is that Kaplan testified against mafia cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were found guilty of eight murders (later tossed out on technical grounds). To be eligible for a Rule 35 — the legal mechanism through which the convicted can get their sentences reduced — you must testify within a year of conviction. Problem was, Kaplan was sent to prison back in 1997, and the cops’ crimes that he testified about had occurred even earlier. So . . . Kaplan gave information to the government about a prison fight he got into over a 2004 Super Bowl wager. (Among other things, Kaplan had paid a prison gang $1,000 to beat up the guy he was angry with. He is, after all, 70.) When he heard about it, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, a stickler for technicalities, was less than thrilled. He told the prosecutor to “promptly” inform the U.S. attorney general and Congress to correct the deficiency in the law and eliminate "this rather bizarre basis for a motion of this kind." Still, Kaplan got his out-of-jail free card.

ON NOTICE
Five days is not a long time, but it is apparently important if you’re being kicked out of a rent-stabilized apartment. The New York Law Journal reports that the Appellate Term, First Department ruled this week that landlords don’t have to provide an additional five days of notice when they mail notices of intent not to renew a rent-stabilized tenancy. The issue is whether when a landlord sends the notice through the mail rather than serving it personally, more than the mandated 90-days notice is required. We all love rent-stabilization – but how much difference is five days really going to make?

JUROR FUROR
The AP reports (following a Newsday story) that the forewoman of the jury that Nassau County Judge Alan Honorof sequestered on Tuesday said she felt pressured into finding guilty (of murder) the man who killed a little girl when he crashed into a wedding limousine. The jury convicted the man of two counts of murder.