Thursday, June 29, 2006

Albany Courts: Slowly being Turned into the “Island of Broken Toys”

Excuse me but isn’t the appropriate remedy for incorrectly applying the law due to bias termination of employment?

Why in the heck is it considered okay to transfer any of these characters up to the courts in Albany?

People in Albany don’t want them up there in their courts either making biased rulings against women. Why should they be stuck with this group of losers from Westchester county?

Upstate New York already has its own homegrown loser court officials, it doesn’t need to import any from Westchester county. These people should have their employment terminated and be forced to look for other lines of work. God only knows how many women and childrens’ lives they’ve destroyed already down in Westchester county, now you want to turn them loose on another unsuspecting group of innocent women, this time up in Albany?

Please.

Do us all a favor and send them packing…

The Journal News

Westchester's matrimonial courts undergo shakeup
By JONATHAN BANDLER
jbandler@lohud.com

THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 23, 2006)
WHITE PLAINS — A review prompted by complaints of unfair handling of divorce cases has led to a shake-up of Westchester's matrimonial courts, the state court system announced yesterday.

Surrogate Anthony Scarpino was named supervising judge of the divorce courts and several judges handling matrimonial cases were reassigned. The role of special referees who mediate divorces will also be curtailed, said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration.

The review began in March in the wake of a feud between Westchester County Judge Francis Nicolai, the administrative judge of the 9th Judicial District, and special referee James Montagnino. Court officials announced yesterday that Montagnino has been transferred to the 3rd Judicial District in Albany.

Montagnino, a former county prosecutor and longtime court system employee, had been accused by several litigants of treating them unfairly. Several female plaintiffs took particular offense at a lecture he gave at Pace Law School two years ago in which he discussed the "10583 Syndrome," a reference to Scarsdale's zip code. He was talking about the mentality of stay-at-home mothers in upscale communities having a sense of entitlement to huge divorce settlements from their wealthy husbands.

Montagnino insisted that the comment was taken out of context from a discussion of the distribution of assets and that he was not biased against women and treated all litigants appropriately. He questioned the timing of the investigation, saying it was in response to his own criticism of Nicolai.

The shake-up led to the removal of state Supreme Court justices W. Denis Donovan, Bruce Tolbert and Richard Liebowitz from the matrimonial courts. Justices Linda Jamieson and Lewis Lubell will now handle divorce cases and Justice William Giacomo will continue to handle matrimonial trials, but will be reassigned to another court, Bookstaver said.

2 comments:

NYMOM said...

But the non-monied spouse is generally a woman. As they are still usually the ones who stay home with the children and even when working don't make as much income.

So to say these people were not biased against women is a little bit disingenuous...

I'm happy for Westchester that they are gone, what I don't understand is why they moved them up to Albany. As that's the last thing upstate New York needs is another biased Judge against the 'non-monied spouse' or as I would call them mothers...

NYMOM said...

Well I don't care what the women in those cases personally felt.

I don't care.

As any disparate treatment based upon income is going to affect more women then men, thus it is not wrong to consider this bias against women. In the same way as voting using literacy tests and property ownership as qualifiers didn't have to have a big block letter heading saying "We are using these tests to specifically keep African-Americans from voting in our states." YET since this was the ultimate result, it was not wrong to make these thing illegal based upon disparate racial impact.

BTW, if you think your daughter is going to appreciate you supporting a system which could lead to her losing custody of her own kids someday you are very wrong. Your daughter will NOT be "free of this nonsense" as you refer to it as any mother is going to want her children to be with her and not relegated to a 2 weekend a month visitor to her child.

Why should a mother be penalized because she works and lose custody of her children for this? Women still are the 'bearers of life' in this society, nothing has changed with this and I see no reason that a mother should lose custody of her children (as you'd like to have happen) just because she works.

If a father wishes to stay home and watch the children and their mother has no objection to this, fine. But that shouldn't translate into you having more rights then her all of sudden...what gave you that idea? A mother's rights remain no matter who watches the children while she works.

I think you have a lot of nerve even implying this as a legitimate tradeoff...