No time to die: Surrogate-gate, a scandal in Brooklyn, gets even worse

Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News
·2 min read
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The bodies aren’t piling up, just the case files, but that’s bad enough. Hundreds of estates of dead Brooklynites have been languishing because Surrogate Judge Harriet Thompson has stopped working. Thompson’s energies are focused on illegally interfering with the city commissioner overseeing estates without wills or heirs. Enough.

Under a very stupid state law, the court appoints Brooklyn Public Administrator Rick Buckheit. And since Brooklyn has two surrogates, the other being Margarita Lopez Torres, the judges must do it tandem. Lopez Torres and her soon-to-arrive successor, the pro-reform Rosemarie Montalbano, are correct that judges should have nothing to do with the PA’s appointment, but the law is the law. Yet Thompson has unilaterally, and illegally, ordered Buckheit to stay away from estates of people who died in even months (Lopez Torres handles odd-months estates.)

City lawyers representing Buckheit properly sued Thompson and Brooklyn state Supreme Court Justice Wayne Saitta issued what he all but admitted was a crazy ruling that either judge can unilaterally hire and fire the PA. Saitta’s faulty logic collapsed immediately when Deputy Public Administrator Aaishatu Glover (who Thompson preferred) resigned. So now no one is handling Thompson’s docket, by Thompson’s own order. Oy vey.

Wait, it gets worse. Since COVID began, Thompson has failed to issue a single citation, the formal notices in Surrogate Court cases. Not one. Lopez Torres and surrogates in other boroughs have kept their cases moving.

Thompson’s lawyer, Brooklyn power broker Frank Carone, weirdly asked state Chief Administrative Judge Larry Marks to appoint a new deputy PA. Marks rightly said he can’t. So then the Brooklyn Bar Association asked and complained about the missing citations. Marks told them the same on the deputy, but he did wisely appoint Justice Larry Knipel as acting surrogate to clear out Thompson’s citations, with the blessing of appellate court Presiding Justice Hector LaSalle.

LaSalle’s court needs to immediately overrule Saitta and shoot down Thompson’s illegal order, letting Buckheit work. And the state Commission on Judicial Conduct needs to take down Thompson for dereliction of duty.