Perfect Example of NY's Corrupt Court System's Crimes Against Families

Secrecy Surrounds Onondaga County Family Court in Wake of Judge's Departure  

The Syracuse Post-Standard by Jim O'Hara  -  April 15, 2012

Gary Walts / The Post-StandardBryan Hedges, an Onondaga County Family Court judge, abruptly left his job April 5. Court and state officials are not discussing the case.

Syracuse, NY - The state agreed to pay $600,000 in damages to the former chief clerk who claimed she was forced from office for refusing to engage in political espionage against a judge. Two attorney/referees were terminated, one under fire following a state Inspector General's investigation. And this month, the longest serving judge currently on that court suddenly gave up his job. That's all happened within the ranks of Onondaga County Family Court, the taxpayer-funded court that's supposed to be helping families with problems.

Through it all, local and state court officials have refused to comment on the upheaval. That includes the mysterious departure of Judge Bryan Hedges from the bench in the middle of the work day. A court spokesman initially referred to Hedges’ departure as a resignation. Now it’s being called a retirement by the court and Hedges’ law clerk. The local administrative judge has refused to comment. And Hedges’ colleagues on the Family Court bench all say they are in the dark about what has happened. David Bookstaver, the spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, declined comment beyond noting that Hedges’ privacy should be respected.  “It should be made perfectly clear that Judge Hedges’ retirement had nothing whatsoever to do with any lawsuit. Judge Hedges chose to retire for personal reasons stemming from his private life and we should therefore respect his privacy,” Bookstaver said. Bookstaver would not comment on the other matters from that court. “I’m not going to start picking apart the history of that area,” he said. “I don’t think it’s productive.” Hedges, whose salary was $136,700 last year, did not return phone calls left over several days. But his law clerk, William Dowling, said Thursday that Hedges had opted to retire effective April 25.  Dowling declined any further comment beyond saying that he and the judge’s secretary would still hold onto their jobs.  The legal community has been abuzz with speculation about Hedges’ sudden departure in the midst of his third 10-year term. But lawyers who practice in Family Court have consistently declined to talk publicly about the turmoil.

The Bobette Morin case

Bobette Morin

Some of the behind-the-scenes feuding threatened to spill out in public after former chief clerk Bobette Morin filed a federal lawsuit in 2007 claiming she was harassed out of office because of her refusal to participate in a conspiracy to discredit Family Court Judge David Klim when he ran for state Supreme Court in 2002.  Morin claimed she was the victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by Fifth Judicial District Administrative Justice James Tormey and carried out by former Executive Assistant John Voninski, Hedges and Dowling.  Court papers indicated the existence of a widening rift in the ranks of the employees with some siding with the ouster of Morin and others claiming they were being strong-armed by Dowling to do so against their will.  Five days before that lawsuit was set to go to trial in federal court last May, Hedges agreed to a settlement and Morin agreed to drop her claims against all four defendants. The state agreed to pay Morin $600,000 to settle the case which had threatened to lay bare a lot of the bitterness dividing employees within the Family Court system had it proceeded to trial.

The referees

This past October, a politically connected Family Court employee whose hiring sparked controversy was fired. Attorney/referee Gina Glover, who handled custody and visitation matters, was fired without any public explanation. The position carried a salary of $115,000 in 2010, according to a government watchdog site. Glover is married to the cousin of former U.S. Rep. Jim Walsh. When she was hired in 2005 at Tormey’s recommendation, Glover did not have the required eight years’ experience and a lower position had to be created for her to stay on the court payroll.  Glover’s hiring also played into the Morin lawsuit.  Morin and her lawyer contended Glover was hired about the same time Walsh was being asked to recommend Tormey’s son for the U.S. Naval Academy. Walsh and Tormey both denied any connection.  Morin and her lawyer claimed Glover’s inexperience led to a delay of more than a year in the implementation of a special court section to handle child neglect matters. And they contended it resulted in Family Court being understaffed because Glover and Walsh’s sister, Family Court Judge Martha Walsh Hood, couldn’t work in the same court due to a familial relationship. Hood was moved to the state Supreme Court’s divorce section. Glover was the second of the two attorney/referees hired at the same time in 2005 to lose the job.

George Raus

George Raus was suspended from his job in June 2009 pending the outcome of a state investigation into his conduct. Two weeks earlier, he said, he had been questioned for several hours by an inspector general’s investigator about whether he ever threatened to hold anyone in contempt, held any ex parte conversations with lawyers whose cases were pending before him in court and used a swear word in court. Based on the results of that state investigation, Raus was fired in October 2009. Officials declined to make the results public and Raus contends he was never told why he was fired. The job paid $111,964 a year. State court officials would only say more than a dozen lawyers had filed complaints against Raus. But court officials refused to make public the report from the year-long investigation into Raus’ conduct despite the position of the executive director of the state Committee on Open Government that the report should be made public. Raus contended this past week that he had been “laid off.” No one in the court system ever told him he was losing the job because of any wrongdoing, he said.

Hedges’ departure

Bryan Hedges

Then, on April 5, Hedges suddenly left his job on the Family Court bench. That reportedly followed a meeting in his chambers with Judge Michael Coccoma, the deputy chief administrative judge for courts outside of New York City.  Hedges has not returned any phone calls since his departure and Tormey declined comment. Tormey referred all questions to Coccoma’s office which referred all questions to Bookstaver. Bookstaver said last week he had been told only that Hedges “resigned” for personal reasons. But Thomas Dadey, the chairman of the Onondaga County Republican Party, said Hedges called him that afternoon to report he had “just retired.” The timing of the departure raised questions since it comes just as state judges were about to see their first pay raise in more than a decade. The lack of a pay raise was something that Hedges routinely complained about, often from the bench in open court.  District Attorney William Fitzpatrick declined comment Thursday, referring any questions about Hedges to the Office of Court Administration. County Attorney Gordon Cuffy said he did not know the reason for Hedges’ departure. The other local Family Court judges have expressed bewilderment at whatever it was that resulted in Hedges’ sudden departure from the bench. Judges Michael Hanuszczak and Martha Mulroy declined comment on any of the turmoil when contacted Wednesday. Walsh Hood declined comment through her law clerk when contacted last week after it was reported she had been summoned from matrimonial court to handle Hedges’ calendar after he left court in the middle of the day  “I guess I would say the loss of a colleague under any circumstance is a sad event,” Judge Michele Pirro Bailey said Wednesday when asked about Hedges. The loss of any personnel results in a workload shift, she said when asked about the departures of Hedges, Glover and Raus  “But our first obligation is to serve the public which I will continue to do to the best of my ability in a timely fashion,” she said.

BACKGROUND STORIES:

• New York State Retaliatory Court Rats to Scatter and Squirm
• Federal Court Okays Lawsuit vs Administrative Judge; Federal Monitor of OCA Needed
• NY State Judge and Attorney Hit With Sanctions in Federal Case
• Former NY State Chief Court Clerk Sues State Judges in Federal Court

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