WHEN JUSTICE GETS TRAUMATIC
It isn’t every day that an inmate sues a judge…Albany City Court Judge William Carter is faced with a whopping $2 million civil rights violation suit, filed by a man who said the judge caused him pain, suffering, and a “lasting fear of the judiciary.” The Commission on Judicial Conduct already censured Carter in September for two outbursts, during one of which, he shed his robes and confronted Talib Alsaifullah, who is serving a sentence for assault. During that incident, Carter asked Alsailfullah, “You want a piece of me?” No physical fight there, but now he does, apparently, want your money. The Albany Times Union reports that, “In weighing whether to remove Carter from the bench, the commission said the judge lost his temper after taking extra care to ensure that Alsaifullah's rights were protected.”

PEACE OUT
The city doesn’t have a right to the membership information from a peace group, federal magistrate judge James Francis IV ruled. According to The New York Times, he found that disclosure could deter the group from political action — which is is how they ended up in the courtroom in the first place. The suit arose from several lawsuits over the mass arrests of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention, in which lawyers representing the city subpoenaed meeting notes from the War Resisters League. They said the notes would tell them who among the group knew of plans for the mass protests. Judge Francis wrote that it is “reasonable to believe that potential WRL members would be deterred from joining, and current members dissuaded from active participation, if they thought that their membership in the organization would be made public.”

DUST UP JUST BEGINNING
The respiratory illnesses caused by 9/11 cleanup dominated the news a few months ago, but the real work on the litigation is just beginning. Southern District Judge Alvin Hellerstein appointed two academics as the special masters who will organize what is anticipated to be thousands of cases. Hoftstra University School of Law dean Aaron Twerski and Cornell Law School professor James Henderson, Jr., will assist with the cases, which by some estimates might reach as many as 11,000, the New York Law Journal reports. In a ruling issued late yesterday, Hellerstein said that without the help of the special masters, “neither plaintiffs nor defendants will be able to organize and present the facts and issues, delaying justice and perhaps denying it entirely.” The lead counsel in the cases are, for the plaintiffs, Paul Napoli of Warby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern and Andrew Carboy of Sullivan Papain Block McGrath & Cannavo; and defense lawyers James Tyrrell, Jr., of Patton Boggs and Richard  Williamson of Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer.

SPITZER ADDS A SHIELD
With 24 other states and Puerto Rico, New York filed a court brief in support of the two San Francisco Chronicle reporters facing jail for refusing to give up the sources who gave them transcripts of grand jury testimony in the Major League Baseball steroids case. Doing the honors, Elliot Spitzer filed the “friend of the court” brief last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Chron reports: “They argued that state laws protecting reporters in most instances from revealing their confidential sources could be rendered ‘meaningless’ by a lesser federal standard. Before a federal court could require reporters to give up their sources, the states contend, it must show that ‘the public interest in disclosure outweighs the public interest in confidentiality.'”