Benchslaps

The 'Creepy' 'Stalker' Lawyer Who Wasn't

An appellate panel turns the tables on the judge who labeled a lawyer creepy for just doing his job.

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The charge sounded trumped up and unwarranted from the outset. Now an appellate court has benchslapped a New York judge who set aside a jury verdict by labeling a lawyer “creepy” based on… well, pretty much nothing.

Back in 2013, Justice Deborah Karalunas forced a third-party lawyer to testify in his own defense. Based on the impressions of, apparently, a single juror, Justice Karalunas declared attorney Scott Greenspan to be a creepy stalker sent up to Syracuse to intimidate the jury on behalf of his client, AIG. This should have raised red flags for Justice Karalunas that she was indulging a crackpot juror. While AIG may resemble a criminal enterprise, it is not, in fact, the mob. The mob runs numbers better. The mob also uses muscle more intimidating than a lawyer. And as we wrote back in 2013, every “accusation” against Greenspan seemed to be pretty standard, non-controversial lawyerly behavior:

According to Greenspan, he only spoke to the jurors once, when they asked him who he was, to tell them that he could not talk to them. He also admits to having gone to the same restaurant as the jurors, but said it was purely by chance. This is, again, pretty much par for the course.

He watched the trial, took notes, and didn’t talk to jurors. Nothing really suspicious here. The worst that could be said of Greenspan was that he ate at the same taco joint by the courthouse as some jurors. Maybe he should have tried to branch out, but are we going to punish a guy just because he loves him some tacos? We called out this dumb conclusion at the time.

For his part, Greenspan makes a very good point about how tiny Syracuse is. It’s not hard to believe that a lawyer would go to the same restaurant as the jurors.

And yet, Justice Karalunas felt the need to overturn the verdict based on one juror’s suspicion that Greenspan’s love of tacos was just a cover for menacing jurors.

The Fourth Department carefully considered the judge’s opinion and responded with, “What the f**k are you talking about?”

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We agree with defendants that the court abused its discretion in conducting an in camera interview of the complaining juror without notifying counsel, without seeking counsels’ consent to that procedure, and without providing counsel with an opportunity to be heard or to participate, even in some restricted manner, in the interview of the juror. Further, the court limited its investigation to one juror, and we conclude that the court abused its discretion in failing to conduct a more expanded investigation, including, at a minimum, conducting an interview of all of the jurors. (citations omitted)

Greenspan, who’d already been cleared by the disciplinary committee, now watches as the screws begin to turn on Justice Karalunas. Fresh off a thorough benchslapping for abusing her discretion, it’s the judge’s turn to look creepy.

The Fourth Department’s full, short, and to the point opinion is available on the next page…

Earlier: Jury Tells Judge That ‘Creepy’ Lawyer Is ‘Stalking’ Them

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