Judge Guy continues on his path of - what? Self-destruction or arrogance hoping for complete impunity? Future will show which one it will be

Received yesterday a letter that I already published on this blog, by Judge Guy, dated May 12, 2015, the date when I notified Judge Guy that I know that he is acting in clear absence of all jurisdiction when he made claims to me he is presiding over a case in the Delaware County Surrogate's Court.

As I wrote here before, according to the order of removal and assignment made on April 3, 2015 and filed in the Delaware County Surrogate's Court but never provided to me until I found it myself, the case was removed as of April 3, 2015 to the Delaware County Supreme Court, and Judge Guy was assigned to that removed case in the Supreme Court.

After having learnt that I know of the order of removal and assignment, Judge Guy stubbornly proceeded instructing the clerks of both courts, the court from where the case was removed and of the court where the case was removed, that the order of removal is "erroneous".

To me, Judge Guy has sent a letter denying my request for adjournment (that I made before I learnt that Judge Guy is acting without jurisdiction in the Surrogate's Court).

I already answered that letter by e-mail when I received it e-mail, and that was 4 days ago, and I indicated to Judge Guy that I am abiding by the court order of removal, and to me all his directives in the Surrogate's Court are void.

The only order of assignment of Judge Guy that I have at this time is the one of April 3, 2015.

Judge Guy, who received my response and request to step down from the case because he appears to be unable to read and comprehend such a simply thing as his own order of assignment and attempts to change rules for the only reason that he has been caught breaking them, did not grace me with an answer to my request to step down.

This case is important not only for me.

It is important for pro se litigants who do not have a voice such as my client has, through me as a trained (and independent) attorney, to oppose judicial misconduct of this kind.

Note that Judge Guy stubbornly orders me in his May 12, 2015 letter that he has sent to me by e-mail and mail on May 13, 2015, that my service of process in the Surrogate's Court (the court from which Judge Guy knows the case was removed on April 3, 2015) must abide by the Surrogate's Court Procedure Act (SPCA).

Note that Judge Guy stubbornly claims that the case remains on the calendar of the Delaware County Supreme Court for May 22, 2015 when it was removed from that court's jurisdiction by clear order of Judge Guy's superior, Judge Mulvey, as of April 3, 2015.

The court order of removal and assignment clearly indicates that as of April 3, 2015 the case is in the Supreme Court, and thus I must abide by the CPLR (Civil Practice Law and Rules) and not the SPCA in how the case is served and generally how I need to prosecute it.

Does Judge Guy not know how to read?

Of course, he does.

He simply does not WANT to read what implicates him in misconduct.  And he wants to change the rules, in arrears, so that he is no longer implicated in misconduct.

And that is the problem not specific to me, it is a problem of the entire judicial system of this court and this country - that immunity/impunity of judges, even for malicious and corrupt acts in office, breeds this kind of arrogant disrespect to the law and litigants' rights in judges.

Stay tuned as to how events developed.

A suggestion to start undoing immunities of all kinds

In New York, judges have to file semiannual (every half a year) financial reports.

Every time I tried to get those reports I was (1) stalled by the New York State Court Administration, (2) sanctioned or badmouthed in court proceedings by the very judges whose reports I was seeking.

What the New York State does NOT have - and should - is the requirement that all government officials file financial reports, readily available for public review, and not only of their own finances, but of finances of their significant others - being that spouses, girlfriends/boyfriends, or partners of either gender, and their relatives related to them to the 6th degree of consanguinity and affinity.

I am not asking for much, actually.

New York rules of disqualification of jurors as fact-finders already allow disqualification based on consanguinity or affinity to the 6th degree.

Rules of affinity actually need to be changed based on the changed concept of a family in New York and in the United States, where marriage is no longer a requirement for a family to be formed, exist and include ties with the extended family on both sides as strong as if the couple is married.

I am the witness of this process as an attorney representing both married and unmarried parents in Family courts in cases of custody of children, where there is no difference in vigor, sometimes vehemence, and strength of family ties with the child is demonstrated by the members of extended family without any relevance to whether the parents of the child are married or not.

Public must be able to know potential conflicts of interest of their public officials, and especially judges.

At this time, the public is stalled (as I was) in obtaining financial information from the New York State Court administration regarding judge's semi-annual financial disclosures.

At this time, the public is prevented and chilled by the increasing trend of sanctions against civil rights victims/plaintiffs in civil rights actions brought against judges and prosecutors from conducting discovery of that misconduct, from being able to call judges and prosecutors to depositions and having an ability, as litigants, to ask them questions that have to be answered under oath and subject them to scrutiny of jurors (and not fellow judges) as fact-finders.

It has been in the news that judges react by pressing charges (sometimes by abusing their power) against members of the public who came to the judge's home address to talk to the judge and address their concerns.

Relying on the decoy system of judicial and prosecutorial discipline is, of course, a joke, and the public knows it is a joke - where attorney disciplinary committees are never pursuing prosecutors for misconduct, no matter how bad and where and committees for judicial conduct, populated predominantly by judges and by attorneys whose licenses and livelihoods are in the hands of judges, thus creating irreconcilable conflicts of interest from the very beginning.

The only way the public will be able to know about judge's behind-the-scenes deals is simple enough:

1. push the state legislators - or push for an amendment to the state Constitutions, if legislators (dominated by the legal profession that is dependent for its livelihood on being on good terms with the judiciary) are unwilling to make necessary changes, to introduce a degree of transparency necessary for the public, the sovereign at both state and federal level, to conduct its own investigations:

A. prohibit restrictions on the use of videotaping of court proceedings by private citizens without the necessity to seek permission or give advance notice for doing such videotaping, in other words, permit spontaneous and surreptitious videotaping of open court proceedings by court observers.

B. Mandate judges who discharge functions of fact-finders (and all judges do, especially judges in administrative proceedings, special proceedings and proceedings in Family Court and at criminal pre-trial hearings) to file and make readily available to the public not only their own financial reports, but reports of their family members to the 6th degree of consanguinity and affinity, affinity understood broadly to mean the actual committed relationships and not only marital relationships.

Then, it will be easier for the public to oversee what now has become a monster of corruption, including judicial corruption, a monster that is protecting its existence through its mostly usurped power and through its secrecy and by creating bars for the public from accessing information.

I predict claims of violation of privacy by judges and other public officials.

I have a very simple response to those claims:  if you want to preserve your privacy, and that of your family, do not run for a public office.  Once you did, you and your finances are in the public domain, and must be disclosed to people who allowed you to rule them.  It is the condition of giving you that consent to rule.  If you do not want to satisfy that condition - do not opt for the job (a well-paying job, paying times more than the average income in this country, a job with a lot of power and a lot of benefits).

The government still wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts?

In a case decided in 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court made the following statement:

"The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts", Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963).

The decision was made on the height of active civil rights movement and public unrest, 5 years before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

The U.S. Supreme Court, a court that is supposedly independent and that must supposedly act in a dispassionate manner, made several decisions helping (for the time being) criminal defendants get justice.

Of course, it did not prevent the same U.S. Supreme Court to wash out the value of those victories by later interpretation, which resulted in a system where wrongful convictions have become the rule rather than the exception.

It is important to note that the case Brady v. Maryland was a state, not federal criminal case, and in that context, by quoting the statement about the U.S. government, the U.S. Supreme Court applied that statement to state government's too, which is what was only fair to do under Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

And that statement, that the government (state or federal) wins whenever justice is done its citizens in the court, is true for criminal, or civil, or and especially civil rights case context.

In that same context, I am asking questions:

• What justice is done the victims of governmental misconduct and corruption when members of the government (state or federal) are granted absolute immunities for their malicious and CORRUPT acts in office?  What kind of "public policy" would support allowing malicious and corrupt acts of public officials in office remain unaccounted for, because, seriously, they are not accounted for if they are not made public - and if the public does not go massively and seriously to the streets and, now, to the social media demanding accountability

• Moreover, what justice is done the victims of governmental misconduct and corruption if they are also made to pay attorney fees and sanctions (an increasing trend in civil rights litigation) for even filing their civil rights lawsuit to ask the courts (as they thought they could pursuant to the 1st Amendment Petitions Clause) to do justice for them and to rule fairly?

• What justice is done if the courts would not want to hear whether a government official (especially a government official of the same class as the court, a judge) did or did not actually commit the misconduct he is sued for, and would not allow discovery?

• What justice is done if a mass of auxiliary workers serving the judge (or prosecutor, another class of recipients of absolute immunity for corrupt acts in office) are also given judicial immunity - and that is done without the parallel promise (even though a fake promise that it is) of a possibility of judicial discipline and without the parallel requirement (although made ineffective) of having judges file their financial disclosures with the court system (every half a year in New York)?

Just questions this time, no answers.

And does it have to be public unrest, civil rights movement led by a leader of the caliber of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for this country's courts to even try and start doing what is fair for its citizens - for fear that otherwise citizens will eliminate the government as it exists, including that court, and start anew?

19 seconds per exhibit! Judge Kevin Dowd makes record speed in accepting multipage exhibits at the ex parte secret trial without looking at them

I obtained the "non-jury trial minutes" from the Delaware County Supreme Court for the trial that was held by Judge Kevin Dowd (subpoenaed witness in the case) ex parte, after Judge Dowd diagnosed me without seeing me and rejected my doctor's diagnosis as being "without merit" and deeming me not appearing at the trial without good cause (of course, an immigrant female attorney may not have a good cause not to appear at Judge Dowd's trial, even with a properly diagnosed medical injury, it is only American-born male attorneys who are given adjournments for medical reasons for the asking by Judge Dowd).

The non-jury trial minutes copy of which I received directly from the Delaware County Supreme Court Clerk, did not have a stamp that it was filed officially with the court, and the index of the case Mokay v. Mokay did not have an indication, as of yesterday, that the non-jury trial minutes made (allegedly) on April 7, 2015 were filed with the court:

The "non-jury trial" (jury was dismissed because Judge Dowd deemed that I waived jury trial for my client by injuring my back and not appearing for that reason) started at 10;39 am and evidence was closed at 1:24 pm, with a lunch break from 11:57 am to 1:15 pm.

Thus, the net time of the trial for receipt of evidence was 1 hour 18 minutes before noon and a whopping 9 minutes in the afternoon, for the total of 1 hour 27 minutes.

That is, ladies and gentlemen, 87 minutes of the court's valuable time that was spent on the trial.

During those 87 minutes of the court's valuable time the court (Judge Dowd) accepted: 

• 273 documentary exhibits, of those 240 exhibits were accepted, without any foundation testimony, at the opening of the trial, 
• 22 exhibits were received during testimony of Richard  Harlem, Esq., in a peculiar manner - the exhibits were first received and only then offered to Richard Harlem for identification
• Then, the witness on the stand offers 7 exhibits without foundation testimony, and they are received, and then
• Richard Harlem identifies 2 "business records" (billing records" and they are received.

I have to say that Judge Kevin Dowd, probably, made it into the Guinness book of records in the speed with which he accepted 273 documentary exhibits contained in several large boxes, during the time period when the judge was not able to even read those exhibits and see whether they are relevant to the trial.

87 minutes to accept 273 multi-page documentary exhibits.

That is, 19.12 seconds per exhibit.  Record speed! Way to go, Judge Dowd!

Of course, the judge did not care whether anything Richard Harlem offers is relevant to the trial, Judge Dowd would have accepted against my husband anything at all, whether relevant or not, as long as it was against my husband.

It is not surprising that Judge Dowd instructed court security to mislead the public that the trial was concluded when the jury was dismissed, so that nobody would see the particulars of how the judge DID NOT read what is offered in evidence to the court - because he COULD NOT read multi-page documents at the speed of 19.12 seconds per each, it is simply not physically possible.

We will see what kind of ex parte decision the ex parte non-public trial produced.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was a definition of a "speedy" trial - I only wonder why Judge Dowd bothered to come to conduct it.  He could just as well have ordered Richard Harlem to deliver boxes of evidence into his chambers, he accepted additional evidence in his chambers from Richard Harlem anyway.

But the Attorney Hartmann, a seasoned lawyer, actually asked the court what Attorney Hartmann knew the court had no authority to give to him - a continuation of jurisdiction over the trial on damages, after the trial on damages was over, to submit evidentiary materials post-trial and to hold additional hearings on damages post-trial.

I am holding my breath whether Judge Dowd will grant that request.

Nothing is impossible for Judge Dowd when he is trying to bend over backwards for a son of a judge Richard Harlem - and to exact revenge against my husband for suing Judge Dowd and exposing him as incompetent, which this trial only confirms tenfold.

Appellate Division 4th Department - Oh, what a tangled web they weave when first, second, third, etc. time they practice to ... mislead and discriminate against litigants the court does not like

Here is what I received today from Appellate Division 4th Department:

The letter is in direct contradiction to the previously issued directive to the Grievance Committee to file an Affidavit of objections to open proceedings to the public.

Before Ms.Gasparini filed her affidavit and before I had an opportunity to respond to it, the court already made a decision - through its clerk Ms.Carafell, and refused to produce to me an order of the court refusing to open court proceedings to the public, in compliance with New York State Constitution, Article VI, paragraph 4, subsection (b) (requiring that all decisions of an appellate court must be made not by its clerk, but by a quorum of four appellate justices with a concurrence of three appellate justices).

So, in the 4th Department it is the clerk making orders and interpreting the applicable law.

Interestingly enough, the 4th Department allows Mary Gasparini, an employee of that same court, to continue prosecuting the civil disciplinary case after Mary Gasparini filed a botched-up criminal proceeding (that the court had to dismiss before the initial appearance date, it was so bad), where Mary Gasparini was the prosecutor, sole complaining witness and the alleged victim, making Mary Gasparini absolutely disqualified from prosecuting the disciplinary case.

Obviously, the court is ok with this situation.

The only thing that the court is concerned about is how to keep the public and the press away from my disciplinary proceedings so that it does not witness a hearing of the PROSECUTION's motion to confirm that FABRICATED referee's report based on UNAUTHORIZED "decision" by the referee and upon FABRICATED court transcripts - which is uncontroverted.

After dismissing the criminal proceedings sua sponte on May 11, 2015, the clerk of the court has the audacity to tell me that I "voluntarily" decided to make my motions to disaffirm and for other relief on submitted basis, and not because I was forced, by the fact that Mary Gasparini's fabricated criminal charges against me, to "choose" whether to appear on the civil motion and at the same time run the risk of being arrested and locked up for the crazy charge of violating my own privacy - and possibly die in jail, because nobody at this point can guarantee my safety when in the custody of the New York State government, or whether to make the civil motions on submitted basis.

It is a real choice, I know.

After having taught Mary Gasparini how to properly file criminal charges against me - which Mary Gasparini, in view of her utter incompetence, failed to do anyway - the court now tells me that because I "chose" to make a motion to disaffirm on submitted basis, I cannot now ask that the proceedings, whether on submitted basis or otherwise, be open to the public.

The court does not recognize that the prosecutor MAY NOT make a motion to CONFIRM the referee's report on submitted basis, that such a motion can be done ONLY with a due process hearing in view of due process issues of my interest in my livelihood and reputation involved.

So, apparently, a hearing on the prosecutor's motion TO CONFIRM is a must - with the respective request to open that hearing to the public, even if the court chooses to exercise selective blindness and claim that my pending cross-motions were "voluntarily" filed on submitted basis only, even though I was forced to do that by Mary Gasparini's frivolous criminal charges - dismissed sua sponte before the initial appearance on those charges when I started to press the court to open all proceedings, including the criminal proceedings, to the public and the press.

We'll see what the "honorable" court will do next.

Stay tuned.

PS  By the way - note that this letter dated May 13, 2015 does not bear the usual stamp CONFIDENTIAL on top of it - so the proceedings are now open to the public, even though Ms.Carafell is pressuring me to jump through additional hoops to have the proceedings open to the public, even though the only thing the law requires of me is make a request to open and waive my privacy (which I did numerous times)?

Will Richard Harlem NOW be disbarred for fraud upon the court? A stunning sworn confession of a Mokay plaintiff, Daniel Mokay

Today I received a stunning piece of evidence that undermines the Mokay v. Mokay lawsuit.

What I found amazing is the first affirmative defense, paragraph 2 at the bottom:

Even more interesting is that the Verified Answer was verified by Zelda R. Smith, legal assistant to Richard Harlem, on May 6, 2015:

Of course, Daniel Mokay is not a "Defendant" in his individual capacity in this lawsuit, he was brought into the lawsuit only as Executor for the Estate of decedent, and there is no way to sue the decedent for contribution other than through suing his Estate.

Two days before the date when Daniel Mokay made the above shown sworn statement through his attorney Michael Breene, stating under oath that the action in Mokay v Mokay was brought because of wrongdoing of the Estate's decedent Andrew Mokay, 

Daniel Mokay fraudulently asked another court, through his attorney Richard Harlem, for the following relief (attached is a snippet from the draft of the order proposed by Daniel Mokay through his counsel Richard Harlem):

I say "fraudulently" because the Estate could not possibly incur the same amount of legal fees (claimed as damages) as the other five plaintiffs in the action, for the simple reason that the Estate was not a party to the Mokay action from June 2007 (the commencement of the Mokay action) to March 2008.  

Moreover, on May 4, 2015 Daniel Mokay made yet another sworn statement in his verified response to my husband's petition to stay distribution in the Estate of Andrew Mokay due to Mr. Neroni's action for contribution against the decedent:

This is the statement from the January 22, 2015 decision that Mr. Neroni (and I as his counsel) allegedly misinterpreted:

So, on May 4, 2015 Daniel Mokay made a sworn statement that Mr. Neroni "misinterpreted" the statement in the decision of the Appellate Division 3rd Department clearly describing three people to be part of the alleged conspiracy to commit fraud in the Mokay action, one of them clearly being the decedent:

Yet, on May 6, 2015, through his other attorney Michael Breen, in another action, Daniel Mokay makes a diametrically opposite sworn statement, that it is the decedent's actions, together with the alleged actions of Mr. Neroni that "caused harm to the beneficiaries of the estate", and Daniel Mokay even specified what kind of harm he is accusing his own decedent (and father off) - that his father "took from the beneficiaries property which he was obliged to give them".

In other words, Daniel Mokay both accuses his own father (whose legal representative Daniel Mokay is, as the Executor of his Estate) of stealing property, but he also asserts that the Mokay action was an action for interference with prospective rights of inheritance of the Estate's beneficiaries - a non-existent cause of action in New York.

Also, when Daniel Mokay states that "the Executor and the estate are faultless with respect to the Plaintiff's claims", Daniel Mokay (and his attorney) apparently pretend they do not understand that the Plaintiff has no other way of bringing a contribution action against the deceased but to sue his estate - that is the legal way of how it is done in the State of New York.

So, on May 4, 2015 Daniel Mokay claimed, under oath, in two actions (Mokay and petition-to-stay-distribution) that the decedent did not commit any wrongdoings and was not a tortfeasor in the Mokay action.

Two days later, on May 6, 2015, Daniel Mokay claimed in a third action, also under oath, and without notifying the other two courts of his sudden change of heart, that the decedent did, indeed, commit wrongdoing "against beneficiaries of the Estate".

First, the Mokay action was commenced in June of 2007 on behalf of five children of the decedent as beneficiaries under a contract to make a will, not as beneficiaries of the Estate, and Daniel Mokay's attorney Richard Harlem argued that on Daniel Mokay's behalf to Judge Garry in October of 2007.

By the way, the contract to make a will was, by the time of commencement of the Mokay action, rejected by probate court in May of 2007.

Second, the five beneficiaries under the decedent's oral contract to make a will, Daniel Mokay one of them (which the children are claiming the decedent has breached) sued the decedent's widow Connie Mokay, who was also a beneficiary under the contract to make a will.

So, if Daniel Mokay is now saying that the Estate, represented by Richard Harlem, was suing on behalf of beneficiaries of the Estate, an untenable situation arose where 

1. the Estate, legal reprsentative of the decedent, could not sue on behalf of the Estate's beneficiaries on the basis of wrongdoing of its own decedent, 
2. Estate could not sue on behalf of five beneficiaries against its other beneficiary, the decedent's widow; and
3. if Estate was representing the interests of the estate's beneficiaries in the Mokay action (which was not part of the 2nd Amended Complaint, by the way), then individual lawsuits by the beneficiaries could not be allowed by the court, and ALL of that is new evidence for new motions to be brought in the Mokay action, to vacate any fraudulently obtained judgments.  

And, by the way, since Daniel Mokay now admitted under oath that the lawsuit was on behalf of beneficiaries of the Estate, which included the decedent's widow Connie Mokay, a co-defendant in the action, it appears that Richard Harlem represented in the Mokay action EVERBODY except Mr. Neroni, two defendants and five plaintiffs. 

I simply don't see how Mr. Harlem can keep his law license after this confession of Daniel Mokay.

And now let's review a sticky equal protection of laws issue.

Mr. Neroni was disbarred for alleged fraud upon the court - without a hearing - with a collateral estoppel attached to a partial summary judgment in an action where the conflict of interest was denied by Judge Fitzgerald, but is now reasserted with new force by the Appellate Division's January 22, 2015 decision and by admission under oath by Daniel Mokay sworn to on May 6, 2015.

So, will Mr. Neroni's order of disbarment will NOW be vacated? 

And will Richard Harlem (and attorneys who helped him) be finally disbarred for openly committing fraud upon the court and for stubbornly pursuing a frivolous lawsuit for 8 years?

The stenographer in the ex parte non-public Mokay trial was the Facebook friend of a subpoenaed witness, the presiding judge's law clerk

Yesterday, I've learnt an interesting fact about the Mokay trial that was conducted on April 7, 2015, in an ex parte manner, in my absence as the defense counsel, despite my documented medical leave and back injury, and that was conducted without presence of the public and while duping members of the public into believing that the trial did not proceed after the jury was dismissed.

The stenographer on the case was a Facebook friend of a subpoenaed witness, the presiding Judge Kevin Dowd's law clerk Claudette Newman - and the even more interesting fact is that as soon as I published a blog about several stenographers being listed as Facebook friends of Claudette Newman, Claudette Newman made her friend-list private.

Nothing like - I cannot even say a little - a LOT of "appearance of impropriety" going on, don't you think?

With these details and even without more (and, as far as I know, there is much more), it is very clear that the integrity of the Mokay trial was compromised.