This is a precedent no judge wants to set.
In a first-of-its-kind rebuke, a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge with 25 years experience on the bench has been found unqualified by a Democratic Party screening panel — a move that will likely doom her chances for re-election this fall.
“She’s not the brightest bulb in the courthouse to begin with,” said one party source, explaining the Brooklyn Democratic Party Judicial Screening Committee’s decision last month to find Justice Laura Jacobson unqualified to run on the party line.
“They looked at her track record, and they found an abnormal percentage of cases were overturned by higher courts,” said the party source. “And when also factoring in she has a poor reputation, she was found unqualified.”
Said another party official, who like the others asked not to be named, “As far as we know, this is the first time in Brooklyn’s history the committee did not reappoint a sitting Supreme Court judge — it’s unheard of.”
Approval by the 25-member committee, comprising members of the county Bar Association and other lawyers, is usually a routine a rubber stamp for sitting judges such as Jacobson, who has spent the past 13 years handling civil cases.
But Jacobson is so disliked and considered so judicially mediocre that the committee found her unqualified, and then rejected her subsequent appeal.
Records show Jacobson’s decisions from the bench in her ninth-floor courtroom at 350 Adams St. have been reversed on appeal at least 57 times in the past decade.
Most recently, the Appellate Division took her to task for not granting a default judgment in a foreclosure case against AWOL tenants and for improperly holding a company responsible for a construction accident although it completed its work four months earlier.
Jacobson’s husband, Peter Weiss — suspended from practicing law in 1994 after mishandling a medical-malpractice suit — is a political consultant who has locked horns with Democratic leaders, sources said.
Lawyers and litigants also find Jacobson brusque and rude, according to multiple lawyers and court sources.
“She fell out of favor with the powers that be,” said one court source. “It’s a clubhouse, and she’s not a member in good standing.”
Said one lawyer who has appeared before her: “She’s not a hard worker; she wastes everybody’s time.”
Jacobson does have fans — among them former NYCLU head Norman Siegel, who was on the losing side of her most prominent case, a 2008 battle for the FDNY pension of a firefighter who died on 9/11.
“I thought she was smart,” Siegel said. “She really tried to resolve the case . . . and then when we finally went to trial, she was steadfast, measured and fair.”
Brooklyn Democratic judicial delegates will meet in September to select their candidates for the November ballot. The rules say they can’t vote for anyone found disqualified by the screening panel.
Jacobson declined to comment.
(Published by NY Post - July 13, 2016)