Gerald Garson
Supreme Court Justice Gerald Garson, elected to the bench in 1997, was indicted on May 22, 2003 for accepting gifts and money for preferential treatment in divorce and child custody cases. Some two and a half months later, he was indicted again, this time for the more serious charge of bribery. Garson was accused of offering advice on how to try cases before him to long time friend and attorney Paul Siminovsky. Siminovsky reportedly repaid the judge for his 'advisement' with expensive cigars, restaurant dinners, and cash.

October 12, 2004
Aggrieved Parties in Divorce Court Get No Relief in Scandal
By LESLIE EATON, NY TIMES

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It was news that confirmed every sneaking suspicion, every paranoid fantasy of anyone who had ever felt wronged in a divorce court.

A judge, arrested on charges that he took bribes. A lawyer, confessing that he wined the judge and dined him and plied him with cigars and cash in return for favorable treatment. A court officer, convicted of taking money and electronic equipment in return for steering cases to the judge.

All this has occurred over the past year and a half in Brooklyn, where Justice Gerald P. Garson, formerly of the matrimonial part of State Supreme Court, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. In his roughly five years on the bench, he granted more than 1,100 divorces, according to court officials.

But if the Garson scandal confirmed some litigants' worst fears about the court system, it also raised the hopes of many of those who had appeared before him, hopes that that somehow, whatever went wrong in their cases would be fixed. That they would get a fresh start, a do-over, a new trial.

Not so.

There has been no wholesale re-examination of Justice Garson's cases. Of the 100 or so people who complained to court officials after the news broke, so far only three have had their cases reopened by Jacqueline W. Silbermann, the administrative judge for matrimonial matters statewide.

Even in cases that involved both Justice Garson and Paul Siminovsky, the lawyer who has testified that he paid off the justice, rulings have not necessarily been scrutinized or overturned.

Litigants had to show some likelihood that they had not received a fair trial in order to get a hearing, Justice Silbermann said, adding, "We couldn't, just because we disagreed with the results, set them aside."

Some of the other unhappy parties, whose cases had not been concluded, have a new Brooklyn judge, Michael A. Ambrosio, an acting Supreme Court justice with decades of experience in Family Court.

But a number of litigants complain that he has left standing many of the decisions made by Justice Garson, and continues to rely on the same lawyers and experts that Justice Garson appointed.

"I feel he's sympathetic, but he doesn't do anything," said Sigal Levi, whose ex-husband pleaded guilty to a charge involving his attempt to bribe Justice Garson in their divorce case. Since Justice Garson was arrested in April 2003, she complained, Justice Ambrosio had not made any decisions that substantially changed the status of the case.

Justice Ambrosio cannot comment on pending cases, said David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the court system.

It is a truism among those who deal professionally with divorce courts that litigants are seldom satisfied with the outcome of their cases. The Garson scandal has only inflamed those feelings, as has the legal system's response.

"My victims are not happy," said Frieda Hanimov, who wore a wire to collect evidence about a scheme to bribe Justice Garson when he was hearing her case and then founded a lobbying and support group that today has about 35 members.

They feel, she explained, that "when you have a corrupt judge, everything is supposed to start from the beginning."

That may have intuitive appeal, but it is not the way the law necessarily works, legal experts said.

"You've got to do more than just complain that the judge was corrupt in another matter," said Locke Bowman, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School. "More has to be shown, a connection between improprieties and a particular case."

The question came up in Illinois in the 1990's, after Judge Thomas J. Maloney was convicted of taking bribes to fix murder cases. A handful of those he convicted got their sentences reconsidered (one case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court), but most did not.

"They say the law has a fear of too much justice," Mr. Bowman said. "Hundreds, maybe thousands, of cases would have had to be started over from scratch."

But critics say that requiring litigants to prove corruption in each of their cases is too steep a bar for everyday people who do not have subpoena powers or wiretaps.

"The burden of proof is going to fall on them to show the case is corrupted, and how are they going to do that?" asked Kathryn Lake Mazierski, president of the New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women, which is pushing for a broad overhaul of the court system.

Even reviewing court records would probably not help, she said, because so much in divorce and custody cases seems to go on in a judge's chambers, rather than in open court.

Another problem is that many cases are settled before trial, and therefore are almost impossible to revisit, said Monica Getz, founder of the National Coalition for Family Justice, an advocacy and support group. The courts tend to view these settlements as voluntary, she said, but often "it's coercion, nothing but coercion." Even so, Ms. Getz praised Justice Silbermann, the administrative judge, for organizing a review of some cases, even though few were reopened. "She made an effort," Ms. Getz said.

The process, which was complicated by the fact that Justice Garson is legally presumed to be innocent, was similar to the one Justice Silbermann used in the mid-1990's, when she assigned another judge to vet the cases handled by a Housing Court judge, Arthur R. Scott Jr., who later pleaded guilty to taking bribes.

This time, Justice Silbermann agreed to hear the cases herself. And she got lawyers to volunteer their time to look over about 30 closed cases in which one of the litigants had complained.

The volunteer lawyers filed motions asking the court to reopen 20 or so of those cases; Justice Silbermann agreed to hold hearings in three of them.

Only one of those cases, which is scheduled for a hearing this month, involved Mr. Siminovsky, the lawyer who has testified that he got favorable treatment from Justice Garson in return for thousands of dollars worth of meals, cigars and cash.

According to Justice Silbermann's March decision reopening that case, Noto v. Noto, the husband contended that Mr. Siminovsky was able to get the case heard in Brooklyn even though neither party lived there, and improperly pressured him into a settlement.

Another case was settled last week, said Dylan S. Mitchell, the lawyer who volunteered his time; the terms are confidential.

The third case seems to be in limbo, said Robert Z. Dobrish, the lawyer who volunteered to handle the motion to reopen. His client would have to hire a lawyer for the hearing, Mr. Dobrish said, and may have been daunted by the cost.

The process left many litigants dissatisfied. Susan L. Bender, one of the volunteer lawyers, described a case she tried to get reopened on the grounds that the woman did not truly understand the settlement she agreed to. But Judge Silbermann did not grant the motion to reopen the case, noting that both sides were represented by lawyers and that Justice Garson had followed the rules in approving the settlement.

"Justice Silbermann was right as a matter of law," Ms. Bender said. "But the emotional component - my client was never able to get over it." The woman, who lost custody of her child, "was blaming it on the system, on Judge Garson, on Paul Siminovsky, on everybody," Ms. Bender added. "It's a hard pill to swallow."

Matrimonial judges each handle hundreds of cases a year, and Justice Garson had many before him in various stages of resolution when he was arrested in April 2003. But getting Judge Ambrosio to revisit issues that were decided by Justice Garson - child custody, say, or division of property - has proven mostly fruitless, some litigants say.

That is certainly the opinion of Gennady Gorelik, a former Wall Street executive who has been engaged in a long-running custody dispute over his two sons, which was before Justice Garson.

In testimony and court filings, Mr. Gorelik has said that after his wife hired Mr. Siminovsky, everything in the case started to go against him. He was particularly suspicious that Mr. Siminovsky had somehow interfered in the report by a court-appointed psychologist, Marie P. Weinstein.

Before Mr. Siminovsky came on board, Dr. Weinstein told the court she was almost finished with her evaluation and, Mr. Gorelik said, told him he would get custody of the boys. Instead, she restarted the evaluation, which eventually cost the parents about $30,000, and recommended that his ex-wife retain custody. In the meantime, Justice Garson was arrested, but Justice Ambrosio relied on Dr. Weinstein's report.

Only after Mr. Gorelik's former wife asked him to pay her legal fees and submitted Mr. Siminovsky's bills did he find evidence of phone calls that bolstered his suspicions, said Patricia A. Grant, his lawyer. She wants to subpoena Mr. Siminovsky, she said, but Judge Ambrosio has been "extremely hostile to our appropriate requests."

Dr. Weinstein said she could not comment on the claims, saying that her involvement in the case "is a matter of court-protected confidentiality."

But Jay R. Butterman, who represents Mr. Gorelik's ex-wife, said that two previous evaluations had reached the same conclusions as Dr. Weinstein did. He described Mr. Gorelik as a "serial litigant" who had seized on the scandal in a last-ditch effort to win the long-running case, which he said is causing financial hardship for his client.

One unfortunate effect of the Garson scandal, Mr. Butterman added, is that "it allows disgruntled litigants to have another shot at the apple."

Sigal Levi has more than suspicions that something went wrong with her case. She even has more than the guilty plea that her ex-husband, Avraham, entered in June to a felony conspiracy charge after he admitted giving $10,000 to a businessman who promised to use it to bribe Justice Garson. (He is awaiting sentencing in that case, as well as for his conviction for violating an order of protection by threatening his wife.)

There is more. In surveillance tapes introduced as evidence in a Garson-related criminal trial in August, the judge and Mr. Siminovsky are seen and heard discussing the Levi case.

Using coarse language, the judge says he will give the husband the exclusive use of the couple's Brooklyn house, even though he doesn't deserve it, and employs an expletive to describe Ms. Levi's legal position.

He assures Mr. Siminovsky that his client is sure to win the case, and tells him to ask Mr. Levi for more money.

Given all this, Ms. Levi is angry and frustrated that so little has changed in her life. Though Justice Ambrosio ordered that she should have visits with her two oldest sons (Justice Garson gave her ex-husband custody of them), that order has not been enforced and she has not seen them, she said.

She is still not receiving child support for the three children who live with her, she said, and her ex-husband has still not had to prove that he is disabled and without financial resources, as he contends, she continued. And she worries that she may indeed lose the house, as Judge Garson threatened; not only is it her home, but she has run a day care business there while studying nursing.

She has a custody hearing later this month, she said, adding, "Let's see what kind of rights I will have. I'm very skeptical."

Meanwhile, Justice Silbermann said she is still open to hearing motions from people who want their cases re-examined, and hopes that effort will make a dent in the negative view some litigants now have of the legal system.

"Their feelings about the court," she said, "have been shattered."