Judge slaps press out of ‘humiliation’ fears

WITNESS TESTIMONY was cloaked in secrecy Tuesday after a Manhattan judge took the hearing to dressing room.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Joan Kenney ordered proceedings over a noisy Chelsea gym be held in her robing room because she “thinks out loud” and didn’t want reporters to “humiliate” her.

Justice Kenney, 58, arrived an hour late — at 11:30 a.m. — and yelled at two lawyers.

The jurist explained that she was on a school tour with her child, and started grilling the press about how she would be quoted.

“I want you to use your editorial discretion . . . . Don’t humiliate me,” she said. “You can’t write everything I say. I think out loud.”

Kenney then ordered reporters to put away their computers — a practice allowed in other state courtrooms.

“In this courtroom, I’m the boss!” she proclaimed. “Close your laptop.”

A reporter told Kenney the case she was hearing — about a loud Brick New York gym — was public, listed in the online court system known as eCourts.

“I don’t care. I don’t write what’s on eCourts,” Kenney said.

When a Daily News reporter explained he was in the courtroom to cover the noise dispute between a Brick New York gym and a luxury W. 17th St. condo — not her — Kenney moved the hearing into her robing room, without the media. “You’re a wiseass,” she told The News reporter.

Kenney threatened to move other hearings behind closed doors last year, but backed down.

She also took the unusual step of sealing all paperwork on another case of interest to the press — a move that was reversed on appeal in December.

Kenney was appointed to her current post in 2010 — the same year the New York City Bar Association said she was “unqualified” to run for a lower judgeship.

The hearing moved behind closed doors Tuesday was to feature testimony from two people who posed as gymgoers to assess the noise at the Brick New York gym, to see if the facility was complying with a previous agreement to reduce noise.

As Kenney left the courthouse smoking a cigarette, she asked a News photographer what he was “up to.”