I wrote a lot on this blog and in my book published in 2018, about intolerable behavior of Otsego County judges Brian Burns and John Lambert.
As to judge Burns, his stark retaliation against a mentally ill 16-year old because his father dared to ask the judge for leniency in a letter and then dared to demonstrate in front of the judge's home and created a website, "The Otsego County Hall of Shame", was and still is all over the Internet.
Not only I, but, as I have recently discovered, Detroit Legal News has written about the peculiar way in which Judge Burns was given an absolute JUDICIAL immunity when he was sued by the child's father for organizing a POLICE RAID upon the father's home in order to seize the father's computers to eliminate the father's blogging and website from the servers, and for being a false WITNESS, not judge, in the criminal proceedings against the father
I was more blunt, found out that judge Burns fired his statutory attorney in the lawsuit, the New York State Attorney General, and hired a law partner of the presiding judge, who had continued close ties with the judge, publicized socialized meetings with drinking, exchange of personnel etc. - and then stated that the case was not "one of a kind", but simply fixed.
The federal court, made extremely friendly to judge Burns' plight as the raider of the critic's house and the false witness against the critic in a criminal proceeding, did the impossible, stretched the already unconstitutional concept of absolute judicial immunity to its breaking point, giving it where judge burns did not exercises any judicial function whatsoever, being simply a witness in a criminal case.
The case with my criticism of judge Burns created a problem though.
All of my blogs about judge Burns were posted out of South Carolina where I went to live in June of 2015 - now an adjudicated fact, through a court case my husband and I recently won in Delaware County Supreme Court (a dispute with an alleged neighbor over an old fence).
So, judge Burns could not simply abuse his power - once again - and order Oneonta City Police to go and raid my house in Georgetown, South Carolina, seizing my computers, as he did to Anthony Pacherille, Sr. back in 2011.
Another course of action remained possible though - to retaliate against me through people I love, through family and close friends remaining in the area.
Judge Burns - and judge Lambert, about whom I blogged, too, but who did not, yet, organize police raids on critics' homes - teamed up and ruled, in legally impossible ways, in two of my close friend's cases, using the fact that she was pro se.
Moreover, the two judges also teamed up and ruled against my family member, including the use of their discretion.
Had the family member in question even known about my ongoing criticism of the judges through this blog, and about judge Burns history of abuse of his position for purposes of retaliation against his critics, it was still impossible to claim bias or appearance of bias against these judges at the time they ruled against the family member.
All Burns and Lambert would have done at that time is deny any motion to recuse by saying that they "analyzed their conscience", the ridiculous standard New York court allow judges to use to reject motions to recuse them, and found themselves to be impartial, because blogs do not mean anything to them, and I am a nobody without a law license who does not live in New York or practice law there for 10 years.
Yet, in August of 2023 and February of 2024 Burns and Lambert, I really don't want to call them judges, they do not deserve that position, took a chance to savor their little dirty trick of retaliation against me through my friend and family member, to rub it in that I must understand why they ruled the way they did against them - my blog.
In a lawsuit against my husband and I as absentee landowners, over an old fence (claimed "obstruction of an easement") on our property in Delhi, NY, both lawsuits since dismissed by an out of the area judge, twice, first on constitutional grounds, second time, when refiled - forever, on the merits, both Burns and Lambert were assigned, one after another, and both of them recused.
Now, my husband was practicing law in the State of New York for 37 years, and I was practicing law for 6 years, before the local clique took our law licenses because of our expanding law business - one daughter got a law degree in 2001, wife got a law degree in 2008, another daughter was in law school at the time of his disbarment, and two more bright and capable younger children could be put through college and law school and added to the business. The local clique could not tolerate the possibility that a familial law firm of four ready or nearly ready very capable lawyers, and especially of six lawyers in the future would start to dominate the local landscape, so both my husband and I were eliminated under false pretenses.
Nevertheless, neither my husband, I consulted with him on this issue, nor I have ever seen from any judge recusing from any of our cases, whether it was about us as parties or attorneys for clients - and there were many recusals - we never, never saw that any judge would provide any written explanation for the recusal.
Judiciary Law 9 requiring such an explanation exists for a long time, but it contains an exception allowing judges not to disclose when recusing information that may be deemed "embarrassing" for judges or third parties.
Now, you need to realize that an "easement dispute", in our case, as it turned out, a claim that we put a fence on our property allegedly blocking an alleged right of way - where all of the claims were ultimately determined by the court to be untrue and the case dismissed - is not only not a political case on a sensitive subject. It is also a case in an area of real property, which is heavily regulated by statute, heavily litigated, and a zillion of cases exist for judicial guidance.
It is practically impossible for a judge to exercise any "discretion" in such a case, he is bound to decide based on a statute or court precedent or both.
So, especially that we were out of the system and the state for over 10 years, there was nothing Burns and Lambert could plausibly lack impartiality over. They simply had to apply clear statutory and precedential law to the clear facts about what was located on real property in full view of the entire local community within 2-minutes walk from the courthouse.
Yet, Burns and Lambert did recuse, and, for the first time in our lives my husband and I saw a written explanation of judges, four of them, as to why they recused.
Here are those explanations, I will post them through direct links to NYSCEF documents, actual recusals e-filed by both Burns and Lambert in our court cases.
Recusal by Burns in August of 2023, click the link and the document will pop up from the court e-filing system NYSCEF;
By Burns in February of 2024;
By Lambert in August of 2023;
By Lambert in February of 2024.
First, note that a Judiciary Law 9 form for recusal of judges EXISTS in the State of New York. Never in my lifetime as a lawyer of party in litigation did I see anything like that - nor did my husband, on his confirmation to me.
Second, look at the number of items to be checked.
The interesting point is that some of the items to be checked are taken directly from Judiciary Law 14, a MANDATORY judicial DISQUALIFICATION statute (not recusal), but nevertheless it is stated in bold font below that the form is only a "suggestion", and that the judge may make a disclosure in any other form, or not to make it at all.
Note also that the form COMPLETELY LACKS any items concerning APPEARANCES of bias - even though a constitutionally intolerable appearance of bias requires disqualification based on both State and Federal court precedent.
Note that neither of the judges checked boxes about recusal for actual bias. They both simply lied, twice, by not checking that box, that they do not have actual bias against me and my husband.
Now let's go to the actual declared reason why both Burns and Lambert recused, twice. Their 2023 and 2024 recusals are identical, so I will post just one scan per each judge.
Burns:
Lambert:
Burns claimed, twice, that one of the defendants, my husband or myself, allegedly sued the judge.
That did not prevent Carl F. Becker, after I sued him twice, from sanctioning me 3 times, after which my law license was taken based on those sanctions, and the federal court refused to review the merits of my retaliation claim, even on declaratory relief grounds, and even mocked me, my husband, and my client for asking.
Now, my husband has disclosed to me that he has never sued Burns in his life, as an attorney, party, judge or anything else.
I, on the opposite, did sue Burns on behalf of two clients, but only once in 2013, 10 and 11 years, respectively, before his recusals on the ground of the lawsuit.
It is interesting to mention that the name of Burns was scrubbed off Pacemonitor's listing of the case, Gray v Stoop, so I am publishing the complete text of the initial lawsuit, with an e-filing stamp of the court on top of every page, listing Burns' name as a a defendant, in his official capacity only.
By the way, Burns lied on the form that he believed that the lawsuit creates a conflict of interest for him in 2023 or 2024.
That same lawsuit did not prevent Burns from presiding over my motion to vacate Becker's sanction on constitutional grounds, new law, and deny me the motion, specifically because, as he explained, he did not want to upend appellate divisions' rulings based upon the unconstitutional sanctions - a perverted logic for a judge, but at least an open explanation.
Consider - it was important for Burns in 2017 to block me from restoring my law license on constitutional grounds, and then defend in court, as an attorney, my family and friends.
It is no longer important for Burns to preside over a puny fence dispute in 2023, 2024, but it is important for Burns to rub it in to me, personally, and to the public who can verify through court records who did and who did not sue the judge, and when, that I was the reason of Judge Burns' recusal, based on a 2013 lawsuit.
Burns did this trick clearly understanding that his 2017 decision posted here is from Family Court, was not appealed and thus is not available for review of the general public, so he can continue to grandstand in 2023 and 2024 that his lofty and honorable self could not bear presiding over a fence dispute in 2023 and 2024 because I, in my then-capacity as a civil rights attorney, on behalf of two clients, has sued him in 2013 in federal court, in his official capacity, challenging constitutionality of certain portions of child neglect statute because Burns was presiding over a child neglect case and was the required defendant in the case as a matter of law.
The disclosure of Lambert is even more interesting.
Lambert complained VAGUELY that ONE OF the defendants in the fence dispute, my husband or me, "expressed animosity toward [Lambert's] law clerk".
Here, the vagueness again, just like in Burns' disclosure - and I do not need to be a fly on the wall to figure that Burns and Lambert co-ordinated their disclosures. They are buddies since at least 1999 when Lambert joined the Otsego County DA's office where Burns was toiling at the time, and have been working in the same building ever since, seeing one another every day.
My husband and I were away from the area for 10 years, and the fence dispute was the first time when Burns and Lambert could rub in their revenge to us directly. Burns and Lambert were clearly united by a common purpose of revenge, and their fake disclosures was clearly deliberately calculated and followed the pattern of "tell me about Tatiana Neroni without telling me about Tatiana Neroni" vagueness.
Why?
Because, upon disclosure of my husband, and upon reviewing official public records, Judge Lambert became a judge in January 2011, thus gaining a law clerk.
My husband was politically and falsely disbarred on July 7, 2011, see Affidavit of one of the fake "plaintiffs" in his case David Mokay, provided to us after
the son-of-a-judge Richard Harlem orchestrated a crippling monetary judgment consisting entirely of fake attorney fees for a fake client
(an attorney involved in SUCH misconduct, claiming a fake client, may not charge any attorney fees, so the entire judgment is fake and void),
and a fake disbarment against my husband on the basis of a fake lawsuit on behalf of a fake client,
ousting my not-son-of-a-judge "blue collar" Cherokee Italian American attorney husband out of the law practice as Harlem's "too" successful competitor and preventing him from building a familial mammoth law firm that would have taken all clients from Harlem.
Lambert was a judge for just six months when my husband was still an attorney. Over these six months, my husband, upon disclosure to me, did not criticize Lambert's permanent law clerk Mark Oursler in any way, not then, not since then, ever.
Moreover, criticism of a law clerk, even if it happened in 2011 by my husband, even theoretically, was too attenuated reason to recuse in 2013 and 2014 over a fence dispute.
What actually happened that it is, again, a way of Lambert getting at me and saying to me that he is recusing because of my criticism of LAMBERT HIMSELF, not only his law clerk Mark Oursler, in my blog, because I only ever criticized them, there, apart of my 2013 lawsuit against Lambert, same as in Burn's case, in my capacity as an attorney agaisnt Lambert in his official capacity, on behalf of two clients, Weaver v Lambert in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
Now, there is a lot to say about the details of Burns' and Lambert's carefully crafted retaliation for my criticism about them in this blog, that Burns and Lambert achieved by unlawfully abusing their judicial power and punishing my close friend and her family, and my family member.
I also found more about the Pacherille story, including the hilarious law review article out of Detroit, of all places, about Burn's corrupt prank of getting a "one of a kind" (translation: fixed) ruling of the federal court that he was somehow entitled to an absolute JUDICIAL immunity for being a fake witness in a criminal case dismissed against Burns' critic, another blogger, on 1st Amendment grounds.
That article, combined with the Court of Appeals dissent in the Pacherille case and with a couple of other pieces that I have overlooked at the time of my initial blogging about the Pacherille story and Burns' involvement in it, shed a completely new and additional gruesome light upon the corrupt and dishonest predator on the bench that Burns is, and the monster that the New York State judicial system has allowed him to become - same as Lambert - by imposing no discipline upon him whatsoever, while being in full knowledge of his chenanigans and condoning them.
Stay tuned for more, believe me, it will be hilariously interesting.
AND - my home and computer is safe from raids by police sent by Brian Burns, me being in another state nearly 900 miles away from the little fat angry dishonest corrupt god.
So - I can and will write whatever I consider necessary to expose corruption and misconduct of judges around the country, including those idiots who my husband and I know personally - and my husband knows all of their little stories since they started practicing law.
After all, Burns was admitted to the bar in 1992 when my husband was already practicing 18 years.
And, Lambert was admitted to the bar in 1999, when my husband was already practicing 25 years.
And, my husband was silent about those little stories that he knows about both judges, those stories that I never knew existed, from times when my husband of 26 years and I did not even meet yet.
My husband was kind to these two younger idiots, never exposing their misconduct publicly.
That is going to change.
When Burns and Lambert crossed the line by hurting our close family member with their retaliation for my blogging, they crossed the line and all bets are off. My husband told me many, many, many little stories of Burns and Lambert, and they will be made public here.
Possibly, in videotaped accounts of my husband, so there is no mistake as to personal knowledge of the person reporting it.
So, stay tuned for a hilarious ride.
