By law, Delaware County Clerk is the court clerk accepting filings for the Delaware County and Supreme Courts.
By law, filings for assigning a judge (RJI number) and filing a motion require, respectively, a $95.00 and a $45.00 filing fee.
No judge will be assigned unless you pay $95.00 with the RJI (Request For Judicial Intervention).
The Delaware County Clerk will not accept from you a notice of motion unless you pay a filing fee of $45.
That is, not unless you are an employee of Delaware County sued in his individual capacity in a civil action for misconduct.
Filing fees in court may be waived only to government entities.
Yet, in Delaware County there were two incidents when filing fees were waived to private parties.
First, Judge Kevin Dowd waived a note of issue fee to son-of-a-judge attorney Richard Harlem in the case Mokay v. Mokay (against my husband who sued Judge Dowd).
There is no basis in the law for such a waiver, but that's what Judge Dowd did anyway.
Second, Delaware County Clerk's office, with or without permission from Judge John Lambert, upon information and belief, waived all fees (RJI and motion fees) to police officer Derek Bowie sued in his individual capacity for intentional misconduct, vehicular assault and battery, Delaware County Index No. 2014-911, O'Sullivan v Bowie.
Derek Bowie is represented by attorney Frank Miller, an attorney who some time ago conducted "hearings" for Delaware County regarding misconduct of yet another police officer, without disclosing to the public that he is not acting as a neutral investigator (as most of the people who came to testify in front of him or talk to him thought), but an attorney hired by Delaware County's insurance company to protect the County from liability.
When I pointed that out to Mr. Miller, he tried to intimidate me not to go any further with raising the issues of his conflicts of interest, because Mr. Miller was concerned for his allegedly perfect "Martindale" score.
Mr. Miller's office seems very familiar with the local courts, to the point of obtaining waivers that their client, police officer sued in his individual capacity, was not entitled to.
To me, improper waiver of a filing fee by the County Clerk to the County employee sued for misconduct in individual capacity is nothing less than an improper gift showing corruption of the court personnel and bias against the police officer's opponent requiring the change of venue and disqualification of the judge, if he ok'd such a "waiver" - not to mention a misconduct investigation against all participants in such a "waiver" that gives the public the appearance that courts' favors in New York can be bought.
In both cases the recipients of the benefits are favored attorneys and in both cases the opponents of the favored recipients of the benefits (fee waivers) are critics of judicial misconduct.
It is a pattern, isn't it?
For that reason, and to clear up the issue - which litigants are and which litigants are not entitled to fee waivers in New York courts in civil actions - I encourage the public to file Freedom of Information requests with the NYS Court Administration to ask the administration to provide, within 5 business days, as required by law:
1) records of financial documents documenting payments of filing fees in O'Sullivan v Bowie, Delaware County Index No. 2014-911;
2) policies of the NYS Court Administration regarding waivers of filing fees, and eligibility for such waivers.
At least, NYS Court Administration should then scratch its collective head to answer the question.
Let's hold our collective breaths to see what they have to say.
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