Concluding that a judge’s tendency to "interrupt, patronize, and admonish" an attorney deprived the lawyer’s client of a fair medical malpractice trial, a Brooklyn appellate court has ordered a retrial before another judge.
"Our review of the record convinces us that the repeated conflict between the court and the plaintiff’s counsel, at all phases of the trialand often times in the presence of the juryunnecessarily injected personality issues into the case, which militated against a fair trial," a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, Second Department, wrote in Porcelli v. Northern Westchester Hospital Center, 2012-00151. The panel faulted Supreme Court Justice Mary Smith (See Profile), sitting in Westchester County, for her "excessive intervention" and the "cumulative effect" of her "improper conduct."
