Early Years

              I am the son and grandson of NYC firefighters, and my great uncle was a battalion chief in the FDNY. The eldest of six children in my family, I was born in Brooklyn and educated on Long Island. I first came to Poughkeepsie in 1964 to attend Marist College, from which I graduated in 1968. At Marist, I always say, “I got a great education despite myself.” I studied extremely hard my freshman and senior years, but in those middle years I was more deeply involved in music and football than in academics. Throughout my years at Marist I also worked part-time; as a senior I worked a full-time night shift at what was then IBM’s South Road Lab.
              By the time I graduated, I was married to a Poughkeepsie girl and we had a new-born daughter. Having always assumed that upon graduation I would be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, I instead had a permanent draft deferment due to my status as a father. So while my new wife entered the first class of women at Marist College, I secured a position as a Dutchess County probation officer. And it was there that fate stepped in.
              Although I had an uncle who was a lawyer, when I became just the second member of my extended family to attend college I did so without any consideration of a career in law. But in my job in probation, I often went to court on Thursdays when violation petitions for recalcitrant probationers were filed. I would watch lawyers appear and plead their clients’ cases before judges, and it struck me that I was at least as smart as any of them (and probably smarter than most). So I took what were then called the “Law Boards” (now know as the “LSATS”) as well as the exam for the NYPD. During the same week, I received my acceptance into St. John’s University Law School and was called down for NYPD physical exam. This was a major turning point for me.
              Though St. John’s offered me a full scholarship, the university at that time prohibited law students from holding even part-time employment – and I had a wife and child to support. But a friend who was finishing up his first year at the law school assured me the no-employment rule couldn’t be enforced. So I entered law school and took a job as a senior investigator for the Office of Probation of the City of New York, working five or six nights a week in the Manhattan and Brooklyn criminal courts. Basically, I interviewed prisoners as well as their families, employers, landlords, and others to establish if they had sufficient community ties to recommend to the arraigning judge that they be released on their own recognizance. It was tough work, but the job was a short subway ride from school and it allowed me to study a few hours each night during down time on the job. At the end of three years, I graduated from St. John’s ranked second out of 355 students in my law school class, and I secured a prestigious one-year clerkship in the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court in Albany.
              Nearing the end of my clerkship, I received job offers in Albany, New York, and Wash., D.C., that offered good pay and prestige. But at a social gathering I had the great fortune to meet Albert M. Rosenblatt, then the District Attorney of Dutchess County and later the Chief Administrative Judge of the State of New York and Judge of the state Court of Appeals. Al, who was to become my mentor, knew my background and of my early achievements. He advised that if I wanted to “earn my chops” as a trial lawyer, I could join his staff as an assistant district attorney. He promised that, though I wouldn’t earn much money, I’d gain more valuable experience than anywhere else. So I accepted his offer of a job as the assistant district attorney assigned to the Town of Poughkeepsie Court. In that position I handled all criminal cases, ranging from shoplifting to murder, from arrest through the trial process.
              While my office was in the Dutchess County Courthouse, I spent most of my time at the town court and police station, working with Town Justices Jack King and Abe Banner and the local police. We used to joke that I was “counsel to the Town Police.” It wasn’t that I rubber-stamped everything officers wanted to do, but we worked closely together and consulted constantly to make airtight cases stick and to keep bad cases out of the justice system. I took phone calls at all hours of the day and night from detectives and uniformed officers, and I spent many weekends riding patrol with them.
             I loved that job, but nearly five years after having graduating second in my law school class I was making only $13,500 a year. My wife and I had just bought our first house in Millbrook and we were hoping to have another child; we simply couldn’t support a family on an assistant D.A.’s salary. So in 1976, the same year I was elected to a four-years term as Town Justice in the Town of Washington, I joined a Poughkeepsie law firm whose staff included Joe Spiegel and Ira Pergament, two men who also had been assistant D.A.s and town justices in the Poughkeepsie area. I practiced law there for almost 40 years, rising to the leadership position in the firm.

Professional Career

              My career in private practice has been rewarding, stimulating, gratifying and often joyful. Our firm was a great, family-like place to work, with several employees with us for more than 20 years. I have loved practicing law and consider myself fortunate to have somewhat stumbled into a career that has allowed me to excel while helping many people. I have tried jury cases from coast to coast and even once in Israel in 1992. I have represented many wonderful clients, some of whom became life-long friends. While I have represented a few movie stars and professional athletes, I much more frequently have represented people who could only receive legal services on a pro bono basis. Several of these people have become life-long friends as well.
              I was trained in the law by some wonderful teachers. Those I served with early in my career belong to different political parties. Some are still-sitting federal judges who I went to school with, while others are recently-retired judges from whom I learned much while working with them in the D.A.’s office, including Al Rosenblatt, George Marlow, Jerry Hayes, Tom Dolan, Steve Greller, Jerry Pisanelli, Jim Brands, Ira Pergament, and Joe Spiegel.
              I am “old school.” I believe, as I was taught, that lawyers are public servants, that the courts exist and derive their authority from the people, and that the courts administer the law for the people rather than for the government.

I have been fortunate to serve my profession and my community in many volunteer capacities, all of which I have enjoyed. They include:

• President of the Dutchess County Bar Association.
• Member of the New York State Bar Association House of Delegates
• Chairman, Judiciary Committee. Dutchess County Bar Association.
• Member, Grievance Comm. Dutchess County Bar Association.
• Member, Pro Bono Panel, Legal Services Corp. of the Hudson Valley
• Member, Pro Bono Panel, Dutchess County Bar Association.
• Member, Board of Directors, Dutchess Golf & Country Club
• Member, Board of Directors, St. Francis Health Care Foundation
• Member, Board of Directors, Joseph Barnard Memorial County Law Library
• Member, Board of Directors, Hyde Park Festival Theatre
• Member, New York State Comm. on Lawyer Alcoholism and Substance Abuse
• Member, New York State Lawyer Assistance Program
• Coach, Town of Poughkeepsie Little League.
• Board Member, Vice President and president, Mid-Hudson Addiction Recovery Service

              Almost 36 years ago, following the sudden deaths of my 14-year-old daughter and my father, I entered a treatment program for recovery for my then untreated alcoholism. Since then I have remained an active participant in that recovery program and maintained my complete abstinence from alcohol and drugs. For almost 20 years I have served on the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Lawyer Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (now called the “Lawyers Assistance Program”). In this capacity I have counseled individuals and addressed groups of lawyers on this subject. More importantly, I have worked with – and continue to do so regularly – men of all ages and their families who are struggling to recover from alcoholism and drug addiction.
              In April 2018 I decided to retire from the practice of law. The decision was not an easy one. As a trial lawyer, I had to deal with the government and the insurance industry virtually every day. The system I grew up in is now broken, and the way in which lawyers are trained today is not the way they were trained formerly. As noted earlier, I am “old school,” and it seems to me the government and the courts perceive that they exist for the institutions themselves and not for the people those institutions are intended to serve. I have seen far too many meritorious cases become bogged down in meaningless delays for endless discovery requests. Court orders were ignored because judges didn’t want to lean too hard on big companies with big law firms; so the system started grinding to a halt. My clients had no practical remedy because the cost of litigation was skyrocketing. It was demoralizing to tell my clients the truth about this system and to have them look at me with eyes that said, “Well, you’re a part of this system, aren’t you?” I couldn’t come up with a good response to that; so I had to leave. I couldn’t stay around any longer just for the money.
              I kept my law license in case I could use it one day to be of some service; I’m big on service. So when the local Democratic Committee asked me to consider running for judge, I gave it long and serious thought. To be quite candid, my initial reaction was, “What do I want to do that for? I’m enjoying my three wonderful granddaughters, and I’m visiting and spending time with old friends and family who live all over the country.” But after conferring with my fiance’ and my son, who also is a lawyer, I was convinced that I know the job of a judge and I know I have the best qualifications and plenty of time to do the job right. I also know that those now on the local bench are there because they’ve been holding political office in this town for 25 to 40 years. To me that is not reason enough and surely not what public service is supposed to be about.
              So I believe this is what I’m called to do to be of service right now. And I pledge my full commitment to you and to all the citizens of the Town of Poughkeepsie that I will devote the time and energy needed to the do the job right.