By Jacob Kaye<\/p>\n
The state Commission on Judicial Conduct last week ordered a Queens Civil Court judge to be removed from the bench, marking the first time the top level of discipline has been doled out by the commission to a judge in the World\u2019s Borough in nearly a decade. <\/p>\n
Queens Civil Court Judge Joseph Kasper was found to have improperly handled his transition from attorney to judge in 2022 in a number of ways. <\/p>\n
Running afoul of the state\u2019s judiciary laws, Kasper continued to run his law practice after being elected as a judge. He also failed to return money owed to his clients that was being held in his escrow account and allowed a paralegal with a criminal history to pose as an attorney and run his practice in his stead. The commission also said that Kasper failed to file a mandatory financial disclosure statement. <\/p>\n
The Commission on Judicial Conduct said that as a result, Kasper should be removed from office. <\/p>\n
Kasper, the lone Republican judge on the bench in Queens, and his attorney didn\u2019t dispute that he committed the misconduct described in the commission\u2019s 69-page report released Thursday. <\/p>\n
But they took issue with the level of discipline the commission imposed. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision is without precedent,\u201d said Richard Emery, Kasper\u2019s attorney and a founding partner at Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. \u201cRemoval is the last resort. It is not the usual sanction for misconduct of a judge, but only misconduct which threatens the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, Judge Kasper has done a creditable job on the bench, he has virtually no backlog, he’s not been criticized in any way for his conduct on the bench,\u201d he added. \u201cThe alleged misconduct relates to his misplaced loyalty to his former clients when he was surprisingly elected.\u201d<\/p>\n
After unsuccessfully running for a spot on the bench in Queens for a number of years, Kasper was elected to the Civil Court in 2021. His victory was a surprise, even to him. Kasper, a mainstay in the Queens County Republican Party, defeated Democratic nominee, Paul Vallone, the late city councilman and member of one of Queens’ former political dynasties.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I have to poke myself with a pin right now to wake up,\u201d Kasper told the Eagle after his victory. \u201cTo quote William F. Buckley, \u2018If I win, I\u2019ll demand a recount.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But even as he made the transition to the bench, Kasper allegedly had a difficult time letting go of his old life. <\/p>\n
While Kasper transferred a number of his cases to Michael Mossa, an attorney he shared an office with who also is a perennial Republican judicial candidate, he also left attorney work to Janice Bar, his longtime friend and paralegal. <\/p>\n
Though Bar is not an attorney, she allegedly performed tasks only a lawyer licensed to practice law in New York is allowed to complete, the commission said. <\/p>\n
Sometimes, she appeared to purposefully mislead the courts and clients, indicating that she was an attorney in her signature. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are troubled by respondent\u2019s facilitation of and failure to supervise Janice Bar as she improperly performed legal services for clients who had retained respondent as an attorney before he became a judge,\u201d the commission\u2019s report read. <\/p>\n
Kasper allegedly paid Bar $600 a week and continued to pay rent for his former law office where she worked for around two years after he officially took to the bench. <\/p>\n
The commission said Kasper \u201cshould have known\u201d Bar was improperly advertising her qualifications. <\/p>\n
According to the report, Bar sent nearly 40 emails to Kasper that included the email signature \u201cJanice Bar, Attorney at Law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bar also notarized a number of documents for Kasper, even though she was not allowed to do so, having previously been convicted of falsely notarizing a document. <\/p>\n
Emery said that while Kasper admits retaining Bar amounted to misconduct, he did so out of loyalty.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was still committed to her as a person and as a friend, and he kept her on while he was a judge to wind down these cases,\u201d Emery said. <\/p>\n
The commission also charged Kasper with allegedly failing to keep track of around $17,000 sitting in his attorney escrow accounts in the two-year period following his election. <\/p>\n
Though he located around $10,000 of funds meant to be paid to clients, he couldn\u2019t account for over $7,000 as of 2024, the commission said. <\/p>\n
Taken together, the commission said the charges were enough to remove Kasper from the bench. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe totality of the evidence established that respondent\u2019s repeated violations of the rules were egregious and he is unfit for the bench,\u201d the commission\u2019s report read. <\/p>\n
But Emery, who has vowed to appeal the determination, argued that the severe discipline wasn\u2019t warranted. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Kasper\u2019s misconduct] did not in any way threaten the public, his actions on the bench were never an issue,\u201d said Emery, who formerly served as a member of the commission. \u201cThe commission never alleged any misdeeds or misconduct on the bench, and it never alleged that he benefited himself in any way by his use of his judicial office. That’s usually the criteria for removal, one or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Kasper\u2019s term isn\u2019t set to end until the last day of 2031, he will hit the mandatory retirement age of 70 at the end of the year. <\/p>\n
Should the commission\u2019s determination stand, Kasper will become only the third judge from Queens to be removed from office by the commission. <\/p>\n
In 2018, the commission ordered the removal of Civil Court Judge Terrence O\u2019Connor, who dismissed several cases because an attorney said, \u201cokay,\u201d in response to his witness’ testimony, a phrase O\u2019Connor claimed could lead the witness. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor also was found to be hostile toward a number of attorneys appearing before him. In one instance, he berated an attorney who had said, \u201cThank you,\u201d because he thought they were being sarcastic. <\/p>\n
The only other Queens judge to be removed was Laura Blackburne, who presided over Queens\u2019 Treatment Court. <\/p>\n
Blackburne was removed in 2005 after she was found to have abused her authority as a judge by ordering a court officer to escort a defendant out of the courthouse through the back stairway in order to elude a police detective who was waiting to make a lawful arrest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jacob Kaye The state Commission on Judicial Conduct last week ordered a Queens Civil Court judge to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-318650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}