JUDGE SPANK
Bx. jurist hit for using staff to baby-sit and shop
AT LEAST she didn’t have her staffers do her laundry, too.
A Bronx judge has received an official reprimand for using her courthouse staff as if they were her personal servants, baby-sitters and chauffeurs, state officials said Thursday.
Mary Brigantti-Hughes, a state Supreme Court Justice since 2005, repeatedly had staffers pick up her daughter at school and then baby-sit her at home, or look after the girl at the courthouse, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct determined. She had her office secretary drive her to New Jersey to go shopping and to get her hair done during the workday. And she had her legal secretary drive her to a Home Depot for gardening supplies.
“By repeatedly using her court staff to perform child-care and other personal services, (Brigantti-Hughes) misused court resources and engaged in conduct that was implicitly coercive and inconsistent with the ethical rules,” the commission’s report concluded.
The commission — a state agency charged with disciplining judg- es — found that Brigantti-Hughes, 54, engaged in the conduct off and on between 2005 and 2011. She used her staffers as baby-sitters roughly five times a year during that period, the commission found.
“It was more than the occasional emergency, where any co-worker would want to help the other. It became an irregular pattern,” said the commission’s administrator, Robert Tembeckjian.
Brigantti-Hughes was also censured for asking her employees to join in on prayer sessions she held in her chambers during business hours. There was no evidence she forced staffers into joining the prayer sessions, but she acknowledged to the commission that her position might have made it hard for them to say no.
The commission, which does not have the power to suspend judges, stopped short of recommending that Brigantti-Hughes be removed from the bench.
Tembeckjian said BriganttiHughes accepted responsibility for her actions and stopped the questionable conduct.
Brigantti-Hughes referred a call for comment to her lawyer, who did not return a call.