CONNECTED: Rep. Joseph Crowley (top) and lawyer Gerard Sweeney (bottom) allegedly benefit from NYC patronage. (
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These guys make a killing from widows and orphans.
A select group of politically connected estate lawyers rake in millions in fees in the city’s Surrogate’s courts, with some law firms billing more than $2 million a year.
Two white-shoe firms in lower Manhattan topped the list: Schram & Graber, which collected more than any other last year — $2.78 million — followed by Bekerman & Reddy, which took in $2.2 million.
In Queens, Gerard Sweeney is king. He heads the borough’s most powerful law firm, Sweeney, Gallo, Reich & Bolz, and snagged more than $1.5 million in fees.
That figure represents 90 percent of the work assigned in 2011 by the public administrator, an appointed arm of Surrogate’s Court that oversees estates of people who die without wills.His firm got $2.2 million in 2010.
Legal experts contend that these kinds of fees are far too high in a system where those with the right connections control hundreds of millions in assets.
“When you talk about all the money the counsel to the public administrator makes and how they make the money and how they get appointed, you’re talking about a fortune,” said Gerard Stern, former head of the state watchdog Commission on Judicial Conduct.
“There’s no reason that a competent public employee can’t do that job just as well.”
Political patronage in New York City Surrogate’s Courts has been an intractable problem since the days of Tammany Hall. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called for its reform in the 1930s, and Robert F. Kennedy compared the courts in 1966 to “a political tollbooth exacting tribute from widows and orphans.”
Not much has changed.
Bronx Surrogate Judge Lee Holzman is currently facing ouster after the Commission on Judicial Conduct voted to remove him from the bench for allowing an allegedly crooked attorney to plunder estates.
And a former bookkeeper in Brooklyn has been indicted on embezzlement charges after helping himself to $600,000 in estate money controlled by public administrator Bruce Stein, prosecutors claim.
Other judges have come under attack over the last decade, including an ex-surrogate in Manhattan, Eve Preminger, for making rulings on an estate in which she had financial interests.
Those calling for an overhaul point to the political connections and favors that make the courts in New York what they are.
Having the backing of the county political party is key to becoming a judge here. Once elected, the surrogate appoints a counsel to the public administrator, who in most cases is hardwired into city politics.
“They make sure who gets elected surrogate. They decide who gets to be public administrator,” said a Queens estate lawyer about the Democratic Party, headed by Rep. Joseph Crowley.
“They decide who runs and doesn’t run, and you can’t fool around with them.”