No Justice, No Piece (of the Pie)

“Don't marry a man to reform him. That's what reform schools are for.” Mae West
“A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.” Lana Turner
“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.” Oscar Wilde
Discovery. Can’t live with it, and can’t live without it. I always say that the only thing worse than not getting discovery is getting discovery. Who wants to read all this stuff? Well I’m changing my mind thanks to Allen “The King of Bling” Ezial Iverson. You remember this guy, one of the greatest shooting guards in history. Well, he had a wife and 5 children and although she claimed that things were not about the other women (are they ever?), she filed a famous request in Georgia in their divorce asking Herr Bling to “give the name and telephone number of every person other than your spouse whom you have had sexual relations and/or intimate physical contact from the date of the marriage to the date of trial.” Man, now there’s a request we’d all like to see. From now on I am putting this in my “usual” Notices for Discovery and Inspection, somewhere between the witness request and the CPLR 3101(i) surveillance stuff.
Did you see that the leading month for divorces in the United States is March? Why? Who knows. They call January the decision month and February the planning month, so of course Jettison the Old Ball and Chain month is March. The most expensive city for divorce lawyers? The City of Angels of course, weighing in at an average of $350 per hour just outpointing New York by a mere $8 per hour. You want to save legal fees? Try the city that Schlitz made famous: Milwaukee at an average of $205 per hour.
I know what you’re thinking. Enough of this piffle. We read the SCBA Law Notes for the substantive New York law, not the stats and celebrity stuff. So, what’s new in the App Divs? Bling and celebrity of course. In 1995 Nancy Lago married Harold Lewis Andrion, an “international tax lawyer in New York” according to the New York Times wedding pages. They wrote that Ms. Lago “who is keeping her name” (How could you improve on Nancy, after all?) was an architect whose dad was a specialist for the CIA. In any event, things went sour eleven years later and a divorce ensued. In 2010 a trial decision came down requiring the equal payment of the marital debt including a $468,000 tax liability for the last two years of the marriage. The trial court presciently included a provision that "should the Defendant lose his law license by suspension, revocation, or otherwise, and be unable to sustain his current level of income, such event shall constitute a sufficient change of circumstances warranting application for downward modification’ of child support.” Both of these issues came before the Second Department and Counselor Andrion rolled over and played dead on the downward modification issue and so that provision was swept aside. As for the tax liability, the Second Department shifted the whole thing to poor Mr. Andrion as “the defendant acknowledged that he handled all tax matters for the parties during the marriage, and attributes his inability to pay his taxes from his current income to the fact that his expenses were too high, in part because he had to maintain a rented home for his family while the parties' house in Pawling was being renovated. However, the evidence adduced at trial indicated that it was his decision to move the parties' full-time residence to the house in Pawling, despite the fact that the house was in ‘bad shape.’ Further, under the circumstances of this case, it cannot be said that the plaintiff derived a benefit from the defendant's failure to pay the taxes.” What, she didn’t live there? The kiddies didn’t like beautiful downtown Pawling? A family decision to live in a badly shaped house means only hubby pays the tax bill. Just what did this guy earn? $475,000. The architect wife still named Nancy? She earned nothing. After all, we’re not talking Betty Jo Bealowaski here.
Now for the rest of the story. In between the trial court and the Second Department decision, the First Department decided Matter of Andrion. Now, I don’t know about you, but every now and then I wake up in the middle of the night with sweat pouring down my forehead dreaming about reading Matter of Friedman in the advance sheets. It seems Counselor Andrion, international tax lawyer to the stars, expert witness to the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform, forged his wife’s name on a Power of Attorney (who hasn’t?) so he could borrow $100,000 for the aforesaid Pawling home that cost him nearly half a mil in tax liabilities. Ouch. A few years later he forged a co-worker’s notary stamp to get an additional $167,000 from Charter One Bank in his wife’s name. So, what’s the appropriate penalty here? For my money, disbarment or at least house arrest in that decrepit Pawling manse. But to the First Department this merits a three year suspension, a Haley Barbouresque reprieve if I’ve ever seen one.
In 1958 President Dwight David Eisenhower declared May 1 to be Law Day. Why? He was sick of all the jingoistic, godless May Day festivities in Moscow and elsewhere for International Workers’ Day. Well, with middling success, Law Day has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and we look forward to the festivities each May 1. This year the American Bar Association has dedicated Law Day to “Heed the Call: No Courts No Justice No Freedom.” Saying that New York is at the forefront of the struggle for court funding, the ABA has established a net portal, spiffy videos and lobbying quality propaganda for the struggle for cash also known as the Taskforce on the Preservation of the Justice System. Who couldn’t get behind that? Me for one. After all the presiding Chief has weighed in with his own video regaling us with the decaying fabric of our judicial system wrought by those misers in the other branches of government who cut $170 million from the $2.4 Billion dollar request to keep body and judicial robes together. After all, isn’t that why we close our courts every day at 4:30 p.m.? As ABA President Bill Robinson, III wrote, “The $170 million budget reduction to the New York State Unified Court System in fiscal year 2011 has resulted in shorter operating hours, crowded court dockets, excessive delays, limited access to court resources for self represented litigants, and higher costs for those who seek assistance from lawyers or expert witnesses.” Not exactly. Putting aside that OCA has overseen the largest expansion of costs in the history of American jurisprudence, and that our court system costs more than any other state by far because of the excesses of the spending, anyone who spends $23 million of taxpayer cash on a place to sleep for a few weeks a year should NOT be allowed to claim that the legislature is depriving citizens of anything by cutting $170 million from OCA’s bloated multibillion dollar budget. Something about casting the first stone I believe. It is just like Albany County blaming OCA for the astounding excessive cost of the Family Court building. This lovely structure has cost us $13.5 million in rent for a Columbia Development project that cost about $11 million for the owners to build. Now we can purchase the whole thing from them for upwards of $23.6 million. For that money one might be able to buy all of Clinton Avenue, but when asked why they paid so much for so little the County Executive response was that the Office of Court Administration pressured us into doing it. So, Mr. Iverson, just who is the real King of Bling here?
Enough of that. On a lighter note did you catch the nice article in the New York Times about the Hon. Ann Pfau? Justice Pfau served as the Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for seven years until she ascended to the job of Chief Administrative Judge from 2007 to 2011. She is still the Statewide Coordinating Judge for the Unified Court System Medical Malpractice Matters. She made the rules for all the judges of the Unified Court System for many years, otherwise known as the Rules of the Chief Administrative Judge, 22 NYCRR 100 et. alia. These rules govern everything from Part 128 “Rules for the Jury System” to my favorite, Part 155, “Caseload Activity Reporting.” It seems that in December of 2011 Judge Pfau tried her first jury trial and this was so wondrous that the New York Times published an article on her personal rules for jury trials. In the article entitled “At 64, a Longtime Judge Receives a Crash Course On the Ways of the Bench” she finally experienced the application of all those beautiful rules she promulgated for our 1,200 trial judges toiling in the trenches. Her personal rules? Something about the marshaling of proof, the ways to address the juries with pattern instructions or the control of the courtroom? Nah. Here they are: Sit up straight. Don’t let them see you sweat. There really is a book called New York Objections. If you have trouble, take a recess.
You just cannot make this up. Finally, here is my favorite quote from the article, “I took a look at the courtroom, and it looked so looming to me. I thought, ‘Man, I’m really going to do this?’ ” Of course you’re not judge, of course you’re not.
Happy Law Day.