A controversial Bronx judge is on trial this week.
Surrogate’s Court Judge Lee Holzman will be the subject of a rare public disciplinary hearing before the state Commission on Judicial Conduct over allegations he rubber-stamped a lawyer’s excessive fees and looked the other way as the attorney helped himself to unearned advances.
That lawyer, Michael Lippman, was the counsel for the Bronx public administrator, the office that handles the estates of people who die without wills. He’s awaiting trial on charges of grand larceny and scheming to defraud.
Commission investigations and proceedings are typically carried out privately and only become public once the panel has determined that there’s been wrongdoing. They then turn their findings over to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, which metes out discipline.
Holzman waived his right to confidentiality in the investigation, allowing the proceedings to be public.
Best known for allowing a notorious estate fight to drag on for over 20 years, Holzman contends the commission is moving too fast. He says he needs to call Lippman — who raised $125,000 for Holzman’s judicial campaign in 2001 — as a defense witness against the “nonsensical, vague and overbroad” charges, but Lippman can’t testify until his criminal trial is over.
The commission has countered that Holzman — who’s already tried to delay the hearing three times — is trying to drag the proceedings out as long as possible because he hits the mandatory retirement age of 70 at the end of next year, at which point the panel loses its authority to investigate him.