Southern District of New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has asked the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District to investigate a doctor and his medical group for their “outrageous” behavior in refusing to pay a $25,000-a-year employee while she served as a juror on the trial of accused U.S. Embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani.
An angry Judge Kaplan on Tuesday criticized Dr. Barney Newman, the medical director of the Westmed Medical Group in Westchester County, for the group’s decision to limit the amount of pay for the juror to five days after it indicated to her she would be paid for the entire trial. Kaplan said the actions of Newman and Westmed were “cavalier and, I choose the word very carefully, unpatriotic.” The judge noted that if each of the group’s 250 doctors contributed $100 each, the worker’s salary would be paid for the entire year, according to a report in the New York Daily News.
