Thanksgiving for Fraud Against Retired Judge Recusal (MORE, CLICK HERE)

We are extremely thankful for the recent replacement of the Hon. Michael Pesce in the disgusting judicial cannibalism proceedings Judge Pesce outrageously allowed involving $10 million dollars in assets of a retired fellow jurist, the respected former Civil Court Judge John L. Phillips...MORE....

Here's a front page New York Law Journal "News in Brief" story by Daniel Wise:

New Judge Named to Oversee Guardianship of Ex-Civil Court Judge
November 20, 2007
New York Law Journal – News in Brief – Page 1 – by Daniel Wise

Acting Supreme Court Justice Michael A. Ambrosio of Brooklyn has been appointed to preside over the contentious guardianship of former Civil Court Judge John L. Phillips in the wake of Justice Michael Pesce’s decision Friday to recuse himself, Office of Court Administration spokesman David Bookstaver said yesterday.

Responding to a motion to recuse from a former guardian for Mr. Phillips who has been accused of improperly handling his assets, Justice Pesce wrote that these is no legal basis to require his disqualification but that he was doing so to ‘avoid any speculation or suspicion of partiality.”

Justice Pesce, who is the presiding justice for the Appellate Term hearing appeals from lower courts in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, has also been the subject of a complaint filed with the Commission on Judicial conduct by Dee Woodburn, a former paralegal and community activist in Brooklyn. The complaint, which has been pending since April 2006, according to Ms. Woodburn, claimed that in the six years the management of Mr. Phillips’ assets had been under court supervision there had never been an accounting.

Some of Mr. Phillips’ relatives and friends have estimated that his assets, which include the Slave Theater that the Reverend Al Sharpton used to showcase many of his causes, were at one time worth $10 million. Justice Pesce had initially fined the former guardian, Emani Taylor, who had brought the recusal motion, $1,000 a day for failing to comply with an order to turn over documents relating to her handling of the guardianship (NYLJ, Jan. 12, 2007).

Mr. Phillips, 83 has Alzheimer’s disease. After the fine had mounted to $47, 000, Justice Pesce reduced it to a fixed figure, $250 (NYLJ, Feb.8). Symphonie Moss, Mr. Phillips’ stepneice and non-asset guardian, also asked for Justice Pesce to recuse himself.