Furor over hothead top judge
Att’y calls rant ‘libel’; PBA wants jurist axed
The city’s top administrative judge lacks the temperament for the job, said a Brooklyn lawyer whose requests on behalf of a troubled day care center led the judge to label him an “idiot” in an intemperate rant caught on video.
“He could be the subject of a libel suit,” said Morton Avigdor, a lawyer for more than three decades who has run for civil court judge. “I certainly didn’t deserve to be referred to that way. And everyone has a right to be heard,” Avigdor said.
Avigdor spoke to the Daily News as criticism mounted against Fidel Del Valle, the city’s chief administrative judge and commissioner of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
Del Valle’s F-bomb-laced doyou-know-who-I-am rant Nov. 13 against a police officer working a security detail at City Hall was “egregious,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill said Monday.
Del Valle also lit into Assemblyman Peter Abbate in a roomful of Brooklyn lawmakers earlier this year.
But Del Valle’s outburst over Avigdor’s complaint is different — it applies to his handling of a case before his agency.
Avigdor said he wrote to the city Environmental Control Board late in 2017 asking to postpone a hearing in the case of a Brooklyn day care center accused of minor violations of city codes. Avigdor said he sought the delay because he needed time to focus on issues related to the death of another client’s mother.
As the city’s chief judge, Del Valle is the chairman of the Environmental Control Board, which hears cases involving rules enforced by several city agencies. Avigdor’s letter seeking a delay wasn’t addressed directly to Del Valle, but it did come up during a board meeting. “We don’t need a massive discussion of every idiot who writes us a letter,” Del Valle said at a Dec. 7, 2017, meeting.
“The guy put ridiculous statements in there that demonstrated an absolute ignorance of the process, making requests of us which are ridiculous, and it’s a typical wacko letter that I get thousands of,” Del Valle said.
Another board member asked why Del Valle had adopted “such a bellicose tone” over the letter. “Because I’m tired of this nonsense!” Del Valle yelled. “This is not nonsense, it’s rubbish!”
Avigdor learned of the outburst after it was reported in The News on Sunday.
“Some people may be fools, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a right to be heard,” the lawyer said. “I’m disappointed in him (Del Valle) and the seriousness with which he takes his job.”
“If someone sends you a letter with backup documents, it should be heard,” the lawyer added. “But it seems that anyone who challenges their dominion is considered a fool.
“You don’t have to say everything that you think,” Avigdor said of Del Valle’s rant.
Marissa Senigo, a spokeswoman for Del Valle, did not respond to repeated emails.
The News reported last week that Del Valle went off on a profanity-laced rant against a 20-year veteran police officer as he and some guests were headed to a Puerto Rico heritageevent at City Hall on Nov .13.
“Listen babe, I don’t give a f---! Do you know who I am?” Del Valle yelled at the female officer, according to a letter by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. “Who the f--- do you think you are?”
Several other officers at a City Hall security booth also witnessed the outburst.
“I come here every f-----day!” he bellowed at one point, according to the PBA letter. “Do you want to keep your job?”
“We agree with Police Commissioner O’Neill’s characterization that Fidel del Valle’s behavior was egregious.,” PBA President Patrick Lynch said. He called Del Valle a “reprehensible individual,” and said Mayor de Blasio should fire him “immediately.”