A Southern District Judge might make public a CIA memo that allegedly specifies the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. In other news, the office of State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announces its latest targets: politically connected lawyers illegally receiving public pension funds.

The New York Civil Liberties Union files another suit attacking the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies. In other news, an Upstate judge allows a lawsuit to continue against the General Electric Company for its contamination of homes with an industrial solvent decades ago.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Larry D. Martin files a $10 million defamation suit against The Daily News. In other news, Uma Thurman's stalker is convicted.

With judges furiously suing lawmakers, members of the bench are finding more and more reasons to excuse themselves from presiding over certain firms' cases. This could get explosive.

The Appellate Division rescued plaintiffs in a pair of cases from trial court rulings that, in the appellate panels’ view, unfairly hamstrung the personal injury lawsuits.

In one of the cases, an appellate panel tossed out a verdict for the city in a suit brought by an injured employee because Kings County Justice Joseph Levine allowed the city to ambush the plaintiff with a late-disclosed witness. The plaintiff, Frank Caccioppoli, claimed that he injured his knee in a traffic accident involving his sanitation truck, but the jurors didn’t buy it -- not after having hearing from the surprise witness, a radiologist, who insisted that MRI films showed a degenerative condition in Caccioppoli’s knee.

That was a new theory, the appellate panel noted, and given the way it was sprung on him, Caccioppoli never had time to prepare a rebuttal. Adding insult to injury, the city didn’t bother to offer an excuse for waiting until the last minute to disclose the witness, which is all the more reason why Levine shouldn’t have let the city get away with it, the appellate panel said. Caccioppoli v City of New York (April 29)
 

New York City begins enforcing its new health code requiring certain restaurants to prominently display calorie counts on menus. In other news, here comes Court Pestilence.

Sheldon Silver takes on the pay raise recusal movement. A Brooklyn Surrogate Judge receives a death threat. And the Southern District tosses the lawsuit of the MTA's disgruntled former security director.

While Judith Kaye sends an email to judges warning against any behavior that could hurt their cause for a raise, an Erie County Supreme Court Justice tries to remove the law firm of Assembly Speaker (and pay raise impeder) Sheldon Silver from representing the County in a major suit against 77 drug companies.

New York City's lawsuit against the gun industry is dismissed. In other news, another judge recuses himself over accusations of judicial pay raise interference. 

Chief Judge Judith Kaye reassures the Governor that judges won't grind their dockets to a halt amid the pay raise lawsuit. In other news, the Appellate Division finds the Port Authority liable for damages stemming from the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist bombing.

When Governor David Paterson chose Justice Joseph Fisch to serve as the State's Inspector General, he was reaching back across more than a quarter century of personal history. 

New York County Justice Edward J. McLaughlin, who has regularly gotten into trouble with the Appellate Division for hectoring and badgering jurors, was reversed again, this time for overbearing behavior towards a criminal defendant and his supporting witnesses.

McLaughlin “unduly injected himself” into the trial of Vincent Raosto, said a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, which reversed Raosto’s conviction for selling drugs. But that was only one of a laundry list of other prejudicial errors. The prosecutor also was out of line, and as for Raosto’s defense attorney, he was a junky, the appellate panel observed.
 

In an apparent gesture of unity to Chief Judge Judith Kaye's ongoing judicial pay-raise lawsuit, more judges recuse themselves in cases involving legislator-attorneys. In other news, Queens Supreme Court Justice Arthur Cooperman shoots back at the media for blitzing his home over the weekend.

Governor Patterson has some words of caution for participants in the lawsuit filed by state judges to encourage a pay raise. And various parties weigh in on the Sean Bell verdict.

The city waits with bated breath for a verdict in the Sean Bell case. In other news, in a 3-2 decision the Appellate Division refuses to dismiss charges against former New York Stock Exchange chair Kenneth Langone.