I wonder how the NYS Appellate Division 4th Department will be wiggling out of the mess created by Referee Sirkin

The procedure set by the NYS Appellate Division 4th Department in attorney disciplinary proceedings is as follows:

(1) if the court orders a hearing to be conducted on issues of fact, the court appoints a referee "to hear and report";

(2) the referee hears facts and reports to the court (without a recommendation or making any decisions on facts or law);

(3) after the referee's report on issues of fact is filed with the court, both the attorney who is subject to the disciplinary proceedings and the disciplinary prosecutor may file with the court motions to confirm or disaffirm referee's findings of fact;

(4) the court then confirms or disaffirms the referee's report, makes its own findings of fact and findings of law based on findings of fact.

Now, the Referee Sirkin scrapped all of that and, instead of conducting hearings on liability to "hear and report" findings of fact, "granted a motion", or made a decision on the facts and the law.

In fact, court procedures do not even presuppose conducting a hearing while a motion for a summary judgment is pending, but, if the Referee was ordered to conduct a hearing, that was what he was supposed to do - and he refused to do that.

In the recording that I made of my conversation with Referee Sirkin on January 12, 2015 and posted in this blog, Referee Sirkin promised me that he will send me his written decision on the motion.

I still did not receive either the written decision from Referee Sirkin bypassing any court-ordered hearing and simply "granting the motion" without any hearings, nor did I receive any response from the court to my letter requesting appointment of a competent referee who will do what the court has ordered him to do - conduct a hearing and report his findings of fact to the court.

It becomes increasingly more interesting how the court will be untangling the mess it created with appointment of an incompetent referee and refusal to disqualify him when I provided to the court proof, a transcript, where the referee clearly stated that he was GOING to decide a motion, when that was not what he was appointed to do.

Even more interesting is the question how can people's cases be resolved by judges who are not amenable to judicial discipline - since technically referees, judicial hearing officers, and even some judges of the Appellate Divisions who serve past mandatory retirement, are "former" judges and, as such, according to the NYS Commission for Judicial Conduct, are not amenable to judicial discipline.

Reading responses from these different agencies I always wonder - does anybody think in creating contradictory laws and implementing them?