An upstate judge is taking aim at Sheldon Silver’s wallet in the escalating war over judicial pay.
John Curran, a state judge in Buffalo, may boot the state Assembly speaker’s Manhattan law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, from representing Erie County in a massive Medicaid-fraud case that could bring it more than $15 million in fees.
On April 25, Curran filed with the Erie County Clerk’s Office a “notice of intent to seek advice on the law as to the potential grounds to disqualify Weitz & Luxenberg PC.”
In the notice, Curran asked four ethics experts for advice on disqualifying the firm because of Chief Judge Judith Kaye’s pending lawsuit against the state Legislature over what she claims are long-overdue raises for the state’s 1,300 trial judges.
Curran questions “whether Mr. Silver’s firm should be vicariously disqualified given Mr. Silver’s apparent prominence in the aforesaid litigation and his purported political power over a judicial [cost-of-living adjustment] as Speaker of the Assembly and/or the apparent public prominence of this lawsuit in the county of Erie, as well as perhaps elsewhere in the state and nation.”
Curran took the action two days before The Post revealed last week that New York judges were engaged in a “rule-book slowdown,” refusing to hear cases involving firms that employ state lawmakers.
The judge’s salvo specifically cites Silver’s role in the Assembly’s failure to pass bills that would have given judges $60,000 in cost-of-living payments last year.
New York’s judges have made $136,700 a year since their last raise in 1999.
Curran also questions whether the powerful Manhattan Democrat has run afoul of ethics rules for lawyers who are public officials.
New York attorney-conduct codes and state Bar Association opinions require that they avoid activities that “would tend to undermine public confidence in the integrity and efficiency of the legal system” and “must scrupulously avoid using their public offices to promote their private interests and practices.”
The case involves claims by Erie County that 77 drug companies – including Pfizer, Merck and Johnson & Johnson – cheated taxpayers by inflating the prices that Medicaid uses to set reimbursement rates.
When the suit was filed in 2005, then-Erie County Executive Joel Giambra said damages might top $50 million, meaning Weitz & Luxenberg, representing the county, could collect more than $15 million under a standard one-third contingency deal.
Silver has never revealed how much the firm pays him.
One prominent Buffalo lawyer described Curran as a “very smart” judge and praised his latest maneuver in the pay-raise dispute.
“By narrowing it to Silver, he puts pressure on Weitz & Luxenberg because they’ve got cases across the state, but it doesn’t look punitive against the Legislature,” the attorney said.
Spokesmen for Silver and Kaye both declined to comment.
Former state Bar Association President Steven Krane, a partner at Proskauer Rose and one of the experts contacted by Curran, said he couldn’t help because he has been ethics counsel to Weitz & Luxenberg for 20 years.
Another expert, Hofstra University law professor Roy Simon, said he couldn’t make the judge’s June 6 deadline for “friend of the court” briefs because of final exams and his daughter’s upcoming wedding. Simon said he also might have a conflict because he is running for state Senate as a Democrat from Nassau County.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has refused to represent the state against Kaye’s lawsuit, citing “obvious” potential conflicts involving the lawmakers.
In response, Silver and Gov. Paterson have hired lawyer Richard Dolan, a New York Law Journal columnist, for $350 an hour. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) hired, for $300 an hour, lawyer David Lewis, who once represented “Fatal Attraction” killer Carolyn Warmus.