THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:

"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.

“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).

“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.

It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.

" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.

"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.

“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.

Monday, February 23, 2026

Delco/Village of Delhi's fight with their taxpayers and with FOIL and 1st Amendment and common decency. Part I.

I have written about the incestous relationship of Syracuse law firm Hancock Eastabrook with US District Court for the Northern District of New York for over 10 years, see my blog of November 21, 2015 here.

On May 16, 2025, I published a blog article about incestous relationship between the state-and-federal-judges-related law firm Hancock Eastabrook, a Syracuse law firm heavily involved in litigation on behalf of Delaware County - against Decker Advertising (Walton Reporter, NY), and against my husband and I, regarding civil rights litigation concerning the concerted destruction of our house by the government - Delaware County, Village of Delhi and Town of Delhi officials combined.

You can read our lawsuits here, and here. 

In the first lawsuit I finally stopped being silent about the real reason for my suspension from the practice of law and made a disclosure out load, under the penalty of perjury, in an Affirmation filed with the court, you can read it here.

On May 25, 2025 I have published a blog article called "On Demented Supervisors".  The article discussed the incestous relationship of the U.S. Court for the Northern District of New York and its various judges, including the current Chief Judge Brenda K. Sannes and Magistrate Miroslav Lovric with Syracuse law firm Hancock Eastabrook.

The response of the system was fast and furious.

Delaware County and Hancock Eastabrook/Frank Miller used as a straw person Village of Delhi attorneys who removed the second lawsuit in front of the very federal judges whose misconduct I was raising - for years - in my blog articles.

The judges in question immediately required my 78-year-old medically fragile husband to do what they knew was physically impossible for him to do - COME to Binghamton, NY physically, from Georgetown South Carolina where we live since 2015, despite well documented medical information showing that my husband cannot travel.

Magistrate Lovric, naturally, denied my husband's request to conduct the 15-minute-conference by phone.

But no, Magistrate Lovric had to grandstand and abuse his power over a disabled elderly litigant and insist that as a condition of prosecuting a civil rights case related to real estate, he absolutely had to grow another leg and come with that leg to Binghamton NY pronto.

Note that in the "demented supervisor" blog, the same magistrate allowed a Delaware County then-supervisor Thomas Axwell not to come and not to testify in a hearing in Walton Reporter's lawsuit against Delaware County for 1st Amendment retaliation without any medical documentation whatsoever - simply on an affidavit of his daughter saying that he (the county's sitting legislator) is "kind of" demented and no use in giving testimony.

Lovric instantly granted the request despite the glaring jurisdictional issues that such a request posed: that Hancock Eastabrook (counsel for the demented supervisor) had no authority represented a person with diminished mental capacity, where a legal representative had to be substituted.

Why?  Because Hancock Eastabrook can do in that court what it wants - by being a catchall employment receptacle of the courts' judges' multiple relatives and former law clerks.  Not to mention that the firm belongs to Timothy Murphy, brother to Chief Administrative Judge of New York State courts outside of the State of New York James Murphy.

The bought federal court discriminated against us until we could take no more, cut our viable federal claims under a recent mandatory Supreme Court precedent, Royal Canin.

Even that did not stop Chief Judge Brenda Sannes, recent former employer of Hancock Eastabrook's associate Erika Masler, "coincidentally" a daughter of NYS Supreme Court Justice Mark Masler who, also "coincidentally" (1) recused from the our first lawsuit interlinked above, because of that relationship to Hancock Eastabrook, but (2) got assigned to my daughter's lawsuit, barred me from watching judicial proceedings and then killed her viable lawsuit violating every rule in the book - I will write about it separately.

At the same time, Delaware County-entwined Watershed Agricultural Council subjected my daughter to cruel disability discrimination and fired her, see my pending lawsuit about it here, and Delaware County, under the tight control of its czarine Amy Merklen, refused to hire my trilingual (English, Spanish, Russian) lawyer, environmental engineer and GIS coder daughter even for a planner or GIS technician position claiming that she did not provide to them an appropriate writing sample.  Obviously, my daughter's lawsuit against Delaware County Sheriff, served upon the County, did not suffice as a writing sample.  At the same time, Amy Merklen joined forces with the Village of Delhi Mayor after jointly complaining about my FOIL requests and harassing Town of Delhi supervisor Maya Boukai for fulfilling my FOIL requests after two (2) attorneys - the Town Attorney and attorney hired by Ms. Boukai at her own expense told her that it was her statutory duty to release the records to me.

The absolute kicker was the recent public statement of Amy Merklen that she has a problem engaging legal talent to answer FOIL requests.  First, Amy Merklen did not post any such jobs on the County's website.  Second, my daughter, a licensed attorney, lives within a walking distance from Merklen's office.  But no.  She is not good enough for the job.

So - what did Delaware County do to "deal" with the existential "problem" of Tatiana Neroni's and other journalists' and taxpayers' FOIL requests?

Well, they created a series of "portals" "taking care" of FOIL requests by requiring of requesters what the law does not allow to require: to create an account, and to give a third-party private provider your personal information in order to see responses of the County to FOIL requests.

I have no tolerance for this nonsense.  So I simply sued the County, Amy Merklen, Tina Mole and the County Clerk Haley Gransbury who created an additional bar for access to information - a pay per view $5 fee to make people bankrupt before they can even verify whether they do or do not have a case of unequal taxation for preparation of tax certiorari proceedings.

My lawsuit against this bunch can be read here.

Very sadly, they will not litigate at their own expense, as they should - because it is their misconduct that is causing the non-stop litigation against the county by taxpayers and members of the press, not only me.  It will be again put on taxpayers, including my husband and me, who, as out of state property owners in Delaware County cannot even vote these suckers out of office, but whose pocket is engaged to fund their shenanigans and their defense of lawsuits to get them out of the consequences of these shenanigans.

I will report on these ongoing lawsuits.

Stay tuned.





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