A ‘REVOLVING DOOR’
Retired asbestos judge joins injury law firm
An upstate judge who presided over hundreds of asbestos litigation cases during his two decades on the bench has a new job at one of New York’s biggest asbestos litigation law firms.
Ex-Fulton County Supreme Court Justice Richard Aulisi was hired this week to work as of-counsel for Belluck & Fox, a Manhattan personal injury law firm with an extensive asbestos practice.
Lawyers who work “of counsel” are generally advisors or consultants and typically lack the firm’s partners’ workload or responsibility.
Aulisi’s new role was seized upon by critics of law firms that represent people sickened by asbestos.
“With the legal profession having this kind of revolving door — I mean, how can we keep faith in a truly impartial and independent judiciary?” asked Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York.
“You’ve got Belluck & Fox guarding the hen house, so to speak,” Stebbins said.
In an interview with the Daily News, Aulisi said there’s nothing impermissible about his career move — provided he steers clear of cases that came before him during his time on the bench.
“Let me say this — I’ve been a lawyer and/or a judge for 51 years now,” he said. “I have a right to go back and practice law.”
A former president of the bar association in rural Fulton County, Aulisi, 78, was sworn in as a Supreme Court judge in January 2000 and was also assigned to handle all of the asbestos litigation cases in the 11-county Fourth Judicial District.
When he turned 70, and as a Supreme Court judge became subject to biennual physical and mental evaluation, per state judicial law, Auilisi was assigned to preside over asbestos litigation cases in all of the Third Judicial Department’s 28 counties.
At 76, when the Office of Court Administration forced Aulisi into semi-retirement, per state law, the court system asked him to continue handling the asbestos litigation before him as a judicial hearing officer.
Judicial hearing officers are not judges; they act as mediators in civil cases without making rulings.
In April, a state budget cut that scrapped OCA’s judicial hearing officer program put Aulisi out of work.
Soon after, he got an offer from Belluck & Fox.
State law prohibits judges who return to practice law from handling cases they presided over on the bench; similarly, lawyers who become judges cannot preside over matters they worked on as lawyers.
But there are no rules that ban judges from working in the field or the area of law they spent time presiding over as a judge.
“There’s no reason for anyone, that I can see, to complain,” Auilisi said. “There’s certainly nothing unethical about it. I will not be dealing with any cases that I oversaw as a judge.”
Joseph Belluck, a founding partner of Belluck & Fox, wouldn’t rule out having Aulisi work on asbestos cases — but said he will mainly work on personal injury cases, also a focus of the firm.
“Our primary focus with him is on nonasbestos cases — that’s what he handled before he went on the bench” in 1999, Belluck (photo) said. “He handled car accidents, and slip and fall cases, and construction accident cases. That the part of our practice that we’re hoping to develop with him.”
Gov. Cuomo appointed Belluck to chair the state Commission on Judicial Conduct in 2016. The commission investigates and prosecutes complaints against judges.
“We’ve set up a Chinese wall at our office, and we’ve instructed everybody at our office not to have any communication with him at all about any cases that were pending before him,” Belluck said.
Asbestos litigation came under scrutiny during the trials of former state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who took fees from Weitz & Luxenberg, a Manhattan-based firm with a big asbestos practice.
The part of Silver’s conviction related to his Weitz & Luxenberg fees was thrown out by federal appeals judges.
Silver is now serving a 6½-year prison sentence on charges involving fees from a friend’s law firm that specializes in handling real estate tax appeals, and for money laundering.