Hearing in N.Y. Judicial Pay Case Intrigues Law Blogger
As oral arguments were being made today in an unusual lawsuit by New York’s top judge seeking an increase in judicial pay for the state’s jurists, law blogger Eric Turkewitz happened to be in court on another case.
So he stopped by for an hour or so to observe, and then served up a detailed account of that portion of the arguments in a post on his New York Personal Injury Law Blog.
It took some 45 minutes to get to the merits, and at this point Bernard Nussbaum of Wachtell Lipton, representing Chief Judge Judith Kaye, “starts to get particularly impassioned and animated, his arms flailing this way and that while he speaks, to the point I thought he was going to inadvertently smack one of the other lawyers,” Turkewitz recounts. Among the other lawyers at the hearing, one “kept his nervously twitching hands locked behind him while he spoke (and spoke well, I might add) while another kept them folded calmly over his belly.”
Meanwhile, Wachtell is easily doing $1 million worth of legal work, for free, in this case, not only for Kaye but for the entire New York judiciary, Turkewitz notes, at the conclusion of his post. “How, I wonder, can any judge sit fairly on a Wachtell case if this firm is also representing the judge?”
For details of the arguments made during the time Turkewitz was at the hearing, read the full post.
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “New York’s Top Judge Sues for Pay Hike”
ABAJournal.com: “New York Judge Orders Lawmakers to Hike Judicial Pay”
