A Manhattan Supreme Court judge presiding over a malpractice suit was on firm ground in denying the plaintiffs’ bid for recusal, a state appeals court has ruled. He was clearly annoyed by counsel’s arguments but not “so vexed that [he] could not be impartial,” the court said.

Justice Shlomo Hagler was “at times annoyed by plaintiffs’ counsel’s disrespectful attitude and by the grounds raised in the recusal motion, which plaintiffs never proved or adequately investigated,” a unanimous Appellate Division, First Department, panel wrote.