Meet the smiling face of this happy mother, an accomplished professional, a newly minted Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Aherne, of Ithaca, New York, coincidentally an Adjunct Professor of Cornell Law School (there will be more about her "professorship" in one of my articles of this series):
Behind her are her colleagues, "justices" of the New York Supreme Court.
Elizabeth Aherne is obviously happy and is splurging to reporters her biography and her lofty goals as to why she chose to try to get elected as a judge.
Here is what she said:
"Aherne said that running for this position was not something she had initially aspired to do, until local attorneys asked her to run for the position and she saw the public service elements of the job."
Oh, so humble.
No, she didn't want money and power, she just wanted to serve the public, and she went to the bench because some local attorneys asked her.
I wonder what they said to her when asking her - you will easily be fixing court cases for us, for handsome bribes?
We will never know.
She ran on and on about her love of public service:
"“I have always had an element of public service in my career and in my life,” she said. “And that started when I was at Cornell. And so that was really what drew me to [the New York State Supreme Court] was the public service component.”
Once again, I will run separate articles as to what "element" of public service she played with exactly, this "first woman on the Tompkins County Supreme Court bench". Identity politics are so great, aren't they? We are supposed to love her because she is a woman.
And, she rubs it in:
"Aherne said that being a woman in this role is important, made even more significant since she is the first to do so. She said she thinks it is important for her three sons to see a woman hold this position. Additionally, she said it is meaningful for young girls and women to see her hold such a high-ranking position.
“I think that little girls are raised to doubt their voices and I think that [women] experience life differently from men,” Aherne said. “The first thing I would say is not to doubt yourself, that you have worth and what you can achieve.”
Ahh... The women... and how she, as a woman, feels for those little girls...
A perfect tear-jerker, isn't it.
Because telling the public point blank - ha-ha-ha, your dummies, you have just elected me to the bench, while I got there to steal from little girls their future, because I was bought to do just that - would not have given her such soapy accolades in local press, would it?
The new judge Elizabeth Aherne blabbered more in that interview about her supposed immigrant background, and about hard work, and about public service.
All of that was a lie.
17 cases:
(1)
Lazifa S. Gurbanova, individually and as
Parent and Natural Guardian of Z.M., an infant v. The City of Ithaca, Ithaca
Youth Bureau, Cornell University, EF2020-0241;
(2)
Wayde T. Strauf v. Edward D. Nabinger,
Cornell University, Cornell University Board of Trustees, EF2020-0212;
(3)
Gloria Abrams, Brian Abrams v. Cornell
University, Peter Milliman, EF2019-0706;
(4)
Michael Ahedor, Adjoa Ahedor, John Ahedor v.
Cornell University,
EF2020-0395;
(5)
John Augustine v. Welliver McGuire Inc.,
Cornell University, EF2022-0137;
(6)
New York Alpha of Phi Kappa Psi Association,
Inc. f/k/a/ Phi Kappa Psi Association v. Cornell University, EF2022-0638;
(7)
Melanie Acosta v. Cornell University, EF2023-0380;
(8)
Theron D Barrett v. Cornell University, EF2023-0098;
(9)
In the Application of Jessica Francis,
Petitioner, v. Cornell University, EF2023-0834;
(10)
Gizem Osturk, Quatajah Rennalls v. Cornell
University, Board of Trustees of Cornell University, Esat Braveboy, EF2023-0733;
(11)
Alexander Hyland v Cornell University, EF2024-0055;
(12)
Tristan Lee v. Cornell University, Tracey
Thompson, EF2024-0293;
(13)
Eliza VanCort v. Cornell University, Airbnb,
Inc., EF2024-0738;
(14)
William Bryant v. Cornell University EF2024-0596;
(15)
Andrea Beukema v. Cornell University, Jodi
Korich, Lorin D. Warnick EF2024-0471;
(16)
Yuuki Nakayachi v. Cornell University c/o
Ashley Management Corporation EF2024-0950;
(17)
Raymon H. Buchanan, Lauren M. Buchanan v
Streeter Associates, Incorporated, Cornell University, EF2025-0065
in which Justice Aherne got herself assigned without disclosure that Cornell University, a defendant in all 17 of them, is her own and her law clerk's freaking paying employer say otherwise.
These cases have an Azerbaijani/Russian name, and a Japanese name, and a Dutch name, and an Irish name, and a Scott name, names from different cultures, possibly belonging to immigrants, many belonging to women, one belonging to a minor child.
All of them she shamelessly hurt by stealing from them their chance for their fair day in court - because the judge presiding over their cases, without their knowledge, worked, for money, for the defendant Cornell University that they were all suing: for negligently causing their injuries, for racial or age discrimination in the workplace, for disability discrimination against a student.
The types of liability alleged against Judge Aherne and her law clerk Kathleen Sullivan's second employer the Cornell University were vary varied:
- Personal injury by a minor child
- Motor Vehicle
- Other Negligence (Premise)
- Medical, Dental, or Podiatrist Malpractice
- Labor law
- Declaratory relief re rights to real estate on campus
- Personal injury
- Labor law
- Special Proceedings - Other (Pre-action discovery)
- Adult Survivors Act, sexual abuse of students by another student on the grounds of Cornell University
- Violation of NY Labor law, retaliation against a whistleblower employee for complaining about unsafe working conditions
- Discrimination against a disabled student on the basis of his disability, retaliation against student, Federal Americans with Disabilities Act, Rehabilitation Act
- Contract, Cornell placed students into Plaintiff's rental property who thrashed Plaintiff's property
- Age and Race discrimination against an employee of Cornell University
- Other (Employment Discrimination)
- Hazardous conditions at premises owned by Cornell University
- Workplace injury, loss of consortium
Let's look at all of these cases, one by one.
Let's see what the public service "Justice" Elizabeth Aherne who is paid by the hurting New York State taxpayers over $230,000 a year, with benefits, did in cases to which she could never be legally assigned - because she was part of the party defendant in the action, an employee of Cornell University.
Here is Case # 1, a story of a little girl, Z.M., whose mother has an Azerbaijani/Russian name Lafiza Gurbanova.
You can read the full complaint of the little girl by clicking here.
From the complaint, and from other documents in the case, the following story comes out.
Cornell University, supposedly, advised the City of Ithaca to install 3' by 3' connected metal frames around trees that grew next to a parking lot in City of Ithaca park where children were expected to come and play - instead of regular curbsones.
The purpose was, of course, to protect the environment, to protect the trees. Nobody gave a thought of protecting children, obviously.
The little girl - so little that she could try to hang on her hands inside such a 3' by 3' metal frame, did that, while her mother turned away loading her car in the parking lot. That was enough for the metal frame to disconnect from where it was supposed to be fastened, fall and crush the little girl's hand.
Now, read the very dry and supposedly neutral language of Judge Aherne's decision where Judge Aherne corruptly granted her own employer, Cornell University, a way out of the case, here.
The case was appealed, but for some reasons unknown to me, the little girl's attorneys did not appeal the dismissal of Cornell University from the case. I bet if they knew that the judge granted the motion for a summary judgment to her own employer, they would have appealed it.
But, the judge kept mum about it, and so did the attorney for Cornell University, Conrad Wolan.
Attorney Wolan preferred to toss his supposed ethics to the wind and not to tell his opponent, represented an INJURED CHILD - hey, but the judge is my own client, my own employee!!! And so is her law clerk! She can't hear and decide this case!So, the Appellate court that reviewed - and affirmed - the crooked judge's decision dismissing the case against the City of Ithaca, too and leaving the little Azerbaijani girl with a crushed hand without any remedy, stated the following about Cornell University - in a footnote only:
"[1] Plaintiff later added Cornell University as a defendant, given the university's involvement in the design of the parking lot, but plaintiff's claims against the university were dismissed and plaintiff does not appeal from that ruling."
So that you know: an appeal is a giant, and very expensive, undertaking. The appealing party must put together the "record on appeal", all documents in the court case, and the decision of the crooked witch was Document # 167, so the little girl's mother had to pay for attorneys to do that, and to do the argument.
The appeal could easily run into $50,000 or more.
One miracle did happen for the little girl though, on that appeal: two judges dissented, securing for the girl a right to appeal further, to the New York State Court of Appeals.
These hero judges - without sarcasm - are:
1. Judge L. Michael Mackey who I do not know personally
and2. a woman who I do know personally, as a crooked judge herself, and who I would never, in my wildest dreams, thought to call a hero - but I do here, sincerely, for the sake of the little girl:
Judge Molly Reynolds Fitzgerald
By the way, compare this photograph with the one at the beginning of this article. Judge Fitzgerald is the one on the left, above the smiling face of the crooked witch Aherne, happy that she got her prize and can start selling her judicial office immediately.The dissenters blasted Aherne - politely, of course - and said something that no competent self-respecting judge would want to hear:
that, essentially, Judge Aherne is incompetent, does not know how to decide motions for a summary judgment, because every 1-year law student knows (and Judge Aherne teaches 3rd year law students in an Ivy League Law School, Cornell, where tuition costs and arm and a leg) that a judge reviewing a motion for a summary judgment has no authority to review triable issues of fact.
Only the fact-finder (the jury) has such authority.
If a judge reviewing a motion for a summary judgment spots a triable issue of fact, he/she MUST deny the motion.
But no, no, no, how could the crooked witch deny a motion for a summary judgment to her own employer Cornell? After all, that's not why she got HERSELF assigned to that case, without any order of assignment, simply by her own letter - hey, guys, here I am, I was (supposedly) assigned to this case. Audacity helps with crookery, doesn't it?
Not only she assigned herself to the case of her own employer as a defendant, in order to fix that case - in which she succeeded, but she bumped off the case the previously assigned Judge Joseph R. Cassidi with whom the little girl, obviously, had a fair chance, otherwise the witch wouldn't have bumped him.
So she did what the pair of dissenting appellate judges Mackey/Fitzgerald characterized this way (and I skip the portion about shifting the burden of proof - which is also a 1st year of law school deliberate mistake by "Judge" Aherne, an Ivy League Law Professor):
"Even if defendants had shifted the burden to plaintiff, however, in our opinion plaintiff submitted sufficient proof to
1156*1156 present a question of fact for the jury. Among plaintiff's proof was the affidavit of Edward J. Zemeck, a civil engineer specializing in technical investigation and analysis involving street, sidewalk and parking lot construction and maintenance. Zemeck detailed that he had 50 years of professional experience in construction, including as a project manager for bridge, highway and various infrastructure projects, together with "concrete placement" associated with such projects. He stated that he was familiar with literature and studies in the field of civil engineering but was not aware of any published data "addressing the strength of bolted connections into asphalt for the purposes of properly securing bollards to resist foreseeable loading conditions."[5] However, based on his education and experience, Zemeck opined that defendants' installation of the bollards "was a breach of the engineering standard of care" because "[a]sphalt ... is not a dense enough material to keep the bolts in place and is not designed for that purpose." Rather, in his opinion, "bollards such as these should always be installed into or bolted onto proper concrete bases." As a result, Zemeck opined that "the bollards were in an unsafe condition from the moment they were installed ... [and constituted] a highly unstable, heavy fixture in an area where human interaction with the fixtures was foreseeable."
We disagree with the majority's conclusion that Zemeck's opinions were conclusory. The majority faults Zemeck for not citing to "any specific binding industry standard, code, rule or regulation" that defendants violated, but makes no mention of his statement that he was not aware of any published data on the subject. Rather, he based his opinions on his extensive experience in civil engineering and managing construction projects. "The absence of a violation of a specific code or ordinance is not dispositive of the plaintiff's allegations based on common-law negligence principles. Accordingly, a defendant may be held negligent for departing from generally accepted customs and practices even when the allegedly defective condition is in compliance with the relevant codes and ordinances" (Martell v Dorchester Apt. Corp., 208 AD3d 1183, 1185 [2d Dept 2022] [citations omitted]). An expert's opinion is admissible where they possess the requisite skill, training, education, knowledge or experience from which it can be assumed that the opinion rendered is reliable and "any purported shortcomings in the proposed testimony [goes] to the weight to be given [the expert's] testimony, not its admissibility and [can] appropriately 1157*1157 be explored on cross-examination" (Ghazala v Shore Haven Apt. Del, LLC, 229 AD3d 447, 449 [2d Dept 2024] [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]; see Scott v Santiago, 230 AD3d 933, 936 [3d Dept 2024] [expert's opinion that the defendant "deviated from the standard of care" was sufficient to defeat summary judgment motion]; Philwold LLC v Inergy LP, 140 AD3d 1272, 1274-1275 [3d Dept 2016]).
Finally, we disagree with the majority's conclusion that there is no question of fact presented as to whether defendants' installation of the bollards resulted in an "immediate dangerous condition." In reaching that conclusion, we believe the majority has strayed into issue determination, rather than issue finding. "As has been frequently observed, a court's function on a motion for summary judgment is issue finding, not issue determination. Summary judgment is a drastic remedy which should not be granted where there is any doubt of the existence of a triable issue or where the issue is even arguable" (Hierro v Bliss Co., 145 AD2d 731, 732 [3d Dept 1988] [citations omitted]). Here, Zemeck clearly stated his opinion that the bollards were unsafe from the moment they were installed, because asphalt is not a dense enough material to keep the bolts attaching them in place. The fact that the bollards did not fail immediately does not mean, as a matter of law, that they were not dangerous immediately (compare Yarborough v City of New York, 10 NY3d 726, 728 [2008] [finding summary judgment appropriate where no evidence was presented that the pothole on which the plaintiff tripped was dangerous immediately after it was repaired by the defendant]).
In our opinion, the majority has misapplied the rule in Yarborough. As the Court of Appeals explained in San Marco v Village/Town of Mount Kisco (16 NY3d 111 [2010]), Yarborough "recogniz[es] the difficulty in determining, after the passage of time, whether the initial [pothole] repair was negligent. At the same time, the affirmative negligence exception addressed situations where a hazard was foreseeable, insofar as the municipality created it by, for example, digging an unmarked ditch in a road or neglecting to cover a street drain" (id. at 117 [emphasis added]). Here, there is nothing in the record to suggest that the passage of time has made it difficult to determine whether defendants' installation of the bollard was negligent. Unlike the situation presented in Yarborough, the question of whether it was negligent to install bollards by bolting them onto asphalt is not dependent on evidence that once existed but has been lost by the passage of time. Because a question of fact has been presented as to whether defendants affirmatively 1158*1158 created the dangerous condition that resulted in the child's injury, we believe it was error for Supreme Court to grant defendants' summary judgment motion.
The majority also errs, in our view, in holding that plaintiff was required to show that the dangerous condition of the bollard was "immediately apparent" when it was installed. Adding that requirement effectively immunizes municipalities from liability under the affirmative negligence exception, so long as the dangerous condition created by the municipality has been hidden from view. In other words, latent defects could never give rise to liability, even if affirmatively created by the municipality and dangerous immediately. Neither Yarborough nor any other case from the Court of Appeals has, to our knowledge, required such a showing but, even if they had, plaintiff has presented a question of fact as to whether the dangerous condition at issue here was apparent when the bollard was installed. Unlike Yarborough, where any evidence of the allegedly defective repair work lay within the repair itself, here the defect—bolting the bollard onto asphalt—was readily apparent when it was installed, for the reasons explained by Zemeck.
We believe it is for a jury, not this Court, to determine whether to credit Zemeck's opinion. Viewing the evidence, as we must, in the light most favorable to plaintiff (see DeCaro v Somerset Indus., Inc., 228 AD3d 1107, 1110 [3d Dept 2024]), in our opinion defendants' motion for summary judgment should have been denied."
Once again - the two dissenters said that judge Aherne acted outside of her authority (even without mentioning that she was a corrupt witch who should never have been on the case of her own employer in the first place, fixing it).
It was for the jury to decide the case, not for the judge.
Yet, Aherne, an experienced lawyer and law professor who advertises that the most important role for her in the past was representing children "in different counties"
and who is teaching an Ivy League law school clinical course in Childhood Advocacy, for God's sake,
greedily and corruptly robbed the little girl with a crushed hand of a fair chance in court, leaving her injured and without compensation to deal with that injury, which may require expensive enhanced medical care for life.
So much for women as role models for Aherne's three boys, don't you think?
Let me guess - it was, likely, for those three boys that Aherne sold her judicial office to Cornell. Tuition waiver or tuition discounts for three Ivy League college and law school students?
Well, I don't know how much the crooked New York State judicial system can stomach, but maybe, just maybe, openly fixing 17 court cases may be on the outside of enough even for that system - see, the crooked Judge Fitzgerald could not stomach the crappy decision from "Judge" Aherne and gave the girl, at the very least, a break to go to the Court of Appeals.
An appeal to the Court of Appeals is allowed as of right based on double dissent because such double dissent never happens. It happened here, as I said, a miracle of sorts.
We will see whether the girl's attorneys will use that break.
We will see whether the girl's attorney will have the courage to confront Judge Aherne's decision with a motion to vacate because of Judge Aherne's stark legal disqualification under Judiciary Law Section 14, as a goddamned party in the case.
Maybe, New York State police will take my complaint about the 17 fixed court cases seriously.
Who knows?
Things happen.
The mayor of the city of New Orleans who was openly mired in corruption, was charged by the feds.
The state judge in Milwaukee who committed a federal crime, was charged by the feds.
Maybe, just maybe, the FBI will take notice of this case, too. At least, I asked the New York State police to make a referral to the FBI.
We will see, won't we.
One thing that the complaint and these publications are seeking to achieve though - dissemination of information, making the public aware of this apparent bribery scheme between the Cornell Unversity, Judge Aherne and the judge's law clerk Kathleen Sullivan, who is also the Cornell University employee and an adjunct law professor teaching a class at Cornell Law School this school year with Judge Aherne together, as she did since 2020.
If you sue Cornell University, be prepared to point your finger at the judge, if Aherne is (self)-assigned to the case and say: NO, this judge and her law clerk can't be on my case, they both work for the defendant, for money!
I will continue to tell the story of Judge Aherne and her law clerk's apparent corruption, case by sordid case from the list of 17 - or more, as I continue to verify other cases with Judge Aherne's conflicts of interest, the greedy dishonest witch.
Did I tell you that the Aherne self-assigned herself to the little girl's case on January 13, 2022, in her 2nd week of her "public service" on the bench?
Did you consider that the moneys paid to Aherne by taxpayers while she was fixing cases for her second employer, could be gainfully spent by her presiding over cases where she did not have a disqualifying conflict of interest?
Don't you, the hurting New York taxpayers, feel robbed and cheated?
Wouldn't you want to say something about it?
Well, while you are thinking what to do with it, more stories about the crooked Judge Aherne's 17 corrupt court cases are coming.
Stay tuned.
