Administrative Judge Nicolai Upset Election Can't Be Fixed... (CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY)

The good old days of fixing judicial elections in Westchester, Dutchess, Rockland, Putnam and Orange Counties just may be coming to an end soon. The New York Law Journal reports...MORE...

In the good old days, cross-party endorcements and fat-cat bullying determined who would be a judge in the 9th judicial district. Then, judicial steering would seal the fate of "justice" so that the party thugs' predetermination of a case would go as planned.

It's a system- a CORRUPT one, of course, but that's the way things have been going in the 9th judicial district for a very long time.

Here's a great article by Daniel Wise:

NY Judge Files Three Lawsuits Over Rivals' Endorsements By Minor Parties

New York Lawyer - October 11, 2007
By Daniel Wise - New York Law Journal

Ninth Judicial District Administrative Judge Francis A. Nicolai filed three lawsuits Friday to nullify the minor party nominations of four rivals for Supreme Court.

Judge Nicolai - who named Conservative, Working Families and Independence Party officials and other candidates, including his two Democratic running mates - is running for one of three open seats in the five-county district. He claims the parties followed improper procedures that violated election law in deciding which candidates to back.

The endorsements are important because they carry extra ballot lines and votes. In tight contests, those votes can be the margin of victory.

Judge Nicolai's move, sources said, prompted a request from one of his Republican adversaries that the case be moved out of the district and that Judge Nicolai be temporarily replaced as administrative judge while the litigation is pending.

Yesterday, Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Jan H. Plumadore ordered the case transferred to Albany at the request of "all the candidate litigants" in the three cases.

Judge Nicolai continues to serve as the district's administrative judge, said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, because there is "absolutely no reason he can't be fair and impartial in terms of his duties as administrative judge pending the outcome of a case that will be resolved quickly in a different venue."

Thomas Abinanti, who is representing Judge Nicolai in two of the lawsuits, said that Judge Nicolai had notified OCA in advance that the lawsuit would be filed in Westchester County and asked for the cases to be moved to another county.

One of Judge Nicolai's Republican rivals, however, said he had been in touch on Tuesday with Judge Plumadore, who at the time appeared unaware that Judge Nicolai had filed lawsuits in Westchester County.

The litigation pits Judge Nicolai against two fellow Democrats running for the three seats in the Ninth: Orange County Surrogate Elaine Slobod, who has been nominated by the Independence, Conservative and Working Families parties, and Rockland County Surrogate Robert M. Berliner, who is also a Working Families nominee.

The two Republican Party candidates, whose third party nominations Judge Nicolai is seeking to upend, are incumbent Justice William E. Sherwood, who is running for a second term on the Conservative and Independence lines, and Westchester County Court Judge Rory J. Bellantoni, who is running on the Conservative, Independence and Working Families lines.

Judge Nicolai, who was elected as a Supreme Court justice in 1990, decided not to seek a second term in 2004 in the Ninth District, which is usually favorable terrain for Republicans, after he was unable to secure the Independence nomination. Instead, he ran for - and won - a seat on the County Court in Westchester, which has become increasingly Democratic in recent years.

After his election, Judge Nicolai, who has been administrative judge since 1999, was named an acting Supreme Court justice.

Sources identified Justice Sherwood as the candidate who had asked for Judge Nicolai to be replaced during the litigation. Justice Sherwood did not directly acknowledge that in an interview yesterday but did not deny the reports. He also said he had sent e-mails to all candidates involved in the litigation in which he raised the issue of "what an awkward situation" it could create.

Judge Bellantoni said in an interview that, when he had called Judge Plumadore on Tuesday to give him a "heads up" about Judge Nicolai's lawsuits, Judge Plumadore had left him with "the impression that he was unaware of any pending litigation."

Judge Bellantoni added that he believed the cases should be moved because there were concerns about any litigation being handled within the district where Judge Nicolai was the supervisor of the four defendant judges as well as any judge to whom the case would be assigned.

Judge Bellantoni also said that since the normal process is for Judge Nicolai to assign election cases, a transfer was "preferable" because it would eliminate the need to ask any questions about how the cases were assigned.

Mr. Abinanti, Judge Nicolai's lawyer, said that the lawsuits had been filed in Westchester as a "convenience" because most of the parties were located there and he was facing a tight statute of limitations deadline.

"We knew it was going to be transferred," he said, because "it couldn't be tried [in Westchester] because every judge would have to be recused."

Meanwhile, Mr. Abinanti said it was "somewhat strange" for Justice Sherwood to complain about Justice Nicolai filing a lawsuit in the Ninth District while bringing his own lawsuit in Dutchess County, one of the other counties within the district. In that lawsuit, Mr. Abinanti said, Justice Sherwood is seeking to remove the Right to Life Party symbol from a combined line with the Conservative Party. The lines were combined because of a state law limiting the number of lines per candidate to three, he said.

Justice Sherwood said that, unlike Judge Nicolai, he had not sued any other judges but had only named the state Board of Elections as a defendant in an effort to force a re-arrangement of the way the ballot is structured.

Mr. Abinanti represents Judge Nicolai in the lawsuits filed against the Conservative (Nicolai v. Kelleher, 20495/07) and Working Families (Nicolai v. Kelleher, 20496/07) parties.

Judge Nicolai claims the Conservative nominations should be voided because its nominating convention was held on an unauthorized date, conducted an improper secret ballot and excluded both the public and alternate delegates.

His claims against the Working Families nominations were that a vote was taken without a quorum and that its delegates were not properly apportioned among assembly districts contained within the ninth judicial district.

Similar claims were raised in Judge Nicolai's lawsuit against the Independence Party nominations. In that lawsuit, he is being represented by Jeffrey D. Buss of Smith Buss & Jacobs in Yonkers.