Dead letters
We’ve long thought that Brooklyn Surrogate Court Judge Harriet Thompson, who has had her entire docket stripped away because of her bias and discrimination, was a rotten apple. Her unhinged attacks on Brooklyn Public Administrator Rick Buckheit, the city commissioner who handles estates without wills or heirs, was our first clue. The evidence of her incompetence and malice only piled up since then.
A letter in today’s Voice of the People shows a slice of the damage Thompson has wrought. Voicer Betty Lou Cotignola writes of the great difficulty her husband Anthony has had in trying to probate and settle the estate of his brother, Brooklynite Carlo Cotignola, who died at age 71 on April 29, 2020.
It’s been going on two years since Carlo’s passing and the Cotignola family has been unable to sell Carlo’s Greenpoint three-family house because of Thompson’s refusal to move cases along. The Cotignolas are still paying insurance and taxes on the property and can’t even close out the bank accounts that were frozen by Thompson. And they have to keep paying lawyers while the estate remains unresolved. Haven’t they and thousands of other families suffered enough with the passing of a loved one, only to be tortured by a judge who twisted the bureaucracy?
Carlo died on April 29. If he had died two days later, on May 1, his estate would have been handled by the other Brooklyn Surrogate, Margarita Lopez Torres, who would have rapidly processed the matter. She was responsible for cases with deaths in odd months, Thompson was in charge of the even months. Yes, that’s how crazy the system is.
As we said, Thompson has been ousted (though is still pulling down her $210,900 salary) and replaced by Acting Surrogate Carol Edmead. And newly elected Surrogate Rosemarie Montalbano has taken over following Lopez Torres’ retirement. What Thompson left behind was hundreds of motions never decided, guardian hearings never done, citations unsigned and more.
Buckheit sued Thompson and won. Now he’s retired, so Montalbano and Edmead must find a successor fully independent from Thompson.