Legal News

NY Surrogate Court Judge-Elect Indicted for Campaign Finance Violations

By Dan Slater

Lawyers are definitely having a moment. The Daily News reports that prosecutors were expected to file criminal charges today against Nora Anderson, a lawyer who’s set to be sworn in as a Manhattan surrogate judge, meaning she would preside over estate cases. Indeed, just minutes ago the AP reported that Anderson has been indicted on charges related to her campaign finances.

The charge, apparently, is that Anderson accepted an excessive campaign donation from her boss, Brooklyn trusts and estates lawyer Seth Rubenstein, which could lead to her being suspended and facing another investigation, this time from the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, writes the Daily News.

A spokeswomen for the Manhattan DA’s office and the Commission on Judicial Conduct declined to comment, and a lawyer for Anderson did not return the Daily News’s calls.

Anderson was elected to the $137,600-a-year position after running a pricey Democratic primary campaign that included a $225,000 loan from Rubenstein that could turn out to be seven times the legal limit. (That was apparently kosher under New York’s campaign finance laws until Anderson reached primary day without repaying Rubinstein’s loan. That day, Rubinstein’s unpaid loan converted to a gift under law.) Rubenstein did not return the Daily News’s call seeking comment.

For New York law-world insiders, here’s an interesting twist to the case: According to a Daily News report from the summer, a Manhattan Surrogate Court candidate, Milton Tingling — Anderson’s opponent in the race — called on New York AG Andrew Cuomo to investigate the loan from Rubenstein. Ravi Batra, Tingling’s finance chair, said in a letter to Cuomo’s office, that the loan could “serve to undermine public confidence” in the court.

At the time, Anderson’s campaign manager, Michael Oliva, defended the loan, and said, “How about an investigation into Ravi Batra?”

So who’s Ravi Batra? Loyal LB Readers will remember Batra for his novel suit against the creators of TV show Law & Order. In March, we noted that Batra sued L&O creators for $15 million, claiming libel-in-fiction — a somewhat counterintuitive theory in which a plaintiff claims that something that is fictional is not factually accurate. In March, a New York State judge denied the defendants’ summary judgment motion, making Batra’s suit the first “libel-in-fiction” claim to survive SJ in nearly 25 years.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 10, 2008 (boomark / email).