Spatt, longtime L.I. fed judge, dead at 94

Long Island federal judge and World War II veteran Arthur Spatt died Friday at age 94.

Spatt — born in Brooklyn and raised in Sheepshead Bay, and a former New York state judge — was named to the federal bench in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush.

He served as a Navy petty officer in World War II, and at the time of his death was one of three surviving Brooklyn and Long Island federal judges who were also World War II veterans. The other two are Judge I. Leo Glasser and Judge Jack Weinstein.

Spatt (inset) presided over the headline-grabbing trial in 2007 of Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani, millionaire Long Islanders who were convicted of abusing two Indonesian housekeepers they treated like slaves. Spatt sentenced Varsha Sabhnani to 11 years in prison and her husband Mahender to three years. He also ordered them to pay the housekeepers nearly $700,000 in restitution.

Spatt still carried a full caseload as recently as 2014.

“It’s as stimulating as the first day I was in it. Every case presents new things, innovative things, interesting things, challenging things,” the judge once told an interviewer. “Often describing himself as ‘just a lucky kid from Brooklyn’ and uninhibited by ego, he worked tirelessly in the court and in his chambers six days a week from the time he took to the federal bench more than 30 years ago,” wrote Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Rich Donoghue in an email to his staff about the judge’s death.