New York Courts Squeeze Judicial Whistleblower

Deborah Goodman, the beleaguered stay-at-home mom turned Rockland County judicial whistleblower, says she is at her wits end, unable to get help from persistent court abuse.

In the spring, she faced two major surgeries but her ex-husband’s attorney, Ellen Holtzman, continued filing in their divorce even while Goodman recuperated.

Starting in June, Goodman said Holtzman had the court freeze her accounts, and she’s running out of money.

Goodman’s divorce has dragged on since 2010; she first told her story in a first-person letter in The Rockland County Times in 2015.

At the time, the presiding judge, the now retired Victor Alfieri, had started and stopped her case numerous times and it was dragging on with no resolution in sight.

Alfieri recused himself from the case shortly thereafter and replaced by Judge Robert Berliner.

Berliner finally held a trial in March 2016 but didn’t issue a ruling until March 2017.

Berliner did not put final numbers into his ruling, instead splitting the assets he recognized based on their value at the beginning of the divorce.

The protracted divorce drained Goodman’s resources, and Goodman believes that her ex-husband failed to account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets; as a result, she now owes her ex-husband $263,445.21, according to a calculation by Holtzman.

Holtzman made this claim even though Goodman has largely represented herself during the case while Holtzman has represented Goodman’s ex, Andreas Lempa, throughout.

Lempa is an executive with Phillip Morris. 

“I will not discuss a case that is active, and this case is very active,” Holtzman said in a voicemail of the eight-year-old case, “While a case is active and ongoing, it should not be in the press.”

Holtzman would also not make her client available to answer questions.

But Goodman disagrees: “It’s sick,” she said, describing a process biased against her because her ex-husband can pay for the protracted proceedings.

In April 2018, Goodman had surgery which was supposed to keep her in the hospital for up to a week, but a complication forced a second surgery and she was not released until May 16.

Though Goodman said her boyfriend informed Holtzman she was recuperating, Holtzman still filed a motion- called a motion to show cause- with the court demanding the money on June 1, 2018.

In court documents, Holtzman even acknowledged hiring a private investigator to follow her during this period.

Goodman said due to the surgery she could no longer handle the stress of court: “Everything they do to me; it goes to my gut.” Goodman said.

She hired Patrick Carle to fight the motion; Goodman had filed her own filing- called an undertaking- which would stay any payments while the case was being appealed.

With an undertaking, a bonding company guarantees the payment while the case is adjudicated. In this case, because Berliner did not produce final numbers, Goodman could not use a bonding company but instead had to use surety- or a person who holds the money on deposit. 

But Berliner denied all her requests, and instead, on August 13, Berliner signed an order keeping  

Goodman’s bank accounts frozen, even though she has three children. 

To make matters worse, her new attorney has asked off the case, since she can’t pay him while her accounts were frozen.

Goodman said she felt trapped and wrote a letter to the court asking to grant her attorney’s request off the case, arguing in the letter that the court’s actions caused this.

“My attorney Patrick Carle would like to be removed from my case because I can no longer pay him since the Court froze all my bank accounts. By doing so, I have been left without access to money to live on and most importantly child support for my children. I am understanding to Mr. Carle’s position and I am relieving him effective immediately.” Goodman said in her September 4, 2018, letter to Berliner.

In her motion to show cause, Holtzman asks that Goodman pay for Holtzman’s legal fees and the court to sanction Goodman, which, if granted, would completely wipe Goodman out.

“I have to come to grips with the fact, they (the court) are going to take everything,” Goodman said.

Carle did not respond to a voicemail for comment.

Meanwhile, the New York State Court of Appeals has not yet ruled and declined to grant Goodman a stay while they consider.

Goodman said part of what makes her case so outrageous is that even as she is harassed for this money, her ex-husband has not been held to account for numerous violations of court orders.

 “To date, Mr. Lempa has not paid anything, nor, as ordered in the Decision of April 9, 2018, provided Life Insurance in the amount of $700,000.” Goodman also stated in the letter.

Goodman also said in the same letter that her ex-husband has refused to sign documents and turn over required information, all while Goodman is compelled to hold up her end.

Goodman has also reached out to chairs of the judiciary committees in the state House and Senate, State Representative Jeff Dinowitz and State Senator John Boncic, but both offices said they had no oversight over bad judges, directing her instead to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct (NYSCJC), which sanctions judicial misconduct.

“The NYS Assembly Committee on Judiciary does not handle investigations into the conduct of judges. This committee handles legislation around a variety of legislative amendments dealing with stateand local courts.” Said Frederic B. Klein Community Liaison Office of Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, in response to Goodman’s query.

But according to the NYSCJC annual report, that body rarely takes action; of 2,135 complaints filed in 2017, the NYSCJC only took action publicly in sixteen cases while another thirty-one resulted in private letters of reprimand.

It’s noteworthy that one-hundred fifty-five investigations remained open and another fifteen judges resigned or retired while the investigations were ongoing, according to the same report.

Those numbers are consistent with judicial oversight bodies in the nation; an audit done of the Florida Judicial Qualification Commission (JQC), Florida’s equivalent of the NYSCJC, found that from 2011-2015, that body received 621, 659, 618, 684, and 779, complaints each year while acting in 

4,4,2,4, and 9 cases during the same period.

In some case, the oversight board lack the transparency to even provide an audit.

Taylor Henderson is the Director of the Oklahoma Council on Judicial Complaints (COJC), that state’s version of the NYSCJC, she said that not only does the COJC not produce an annual report like the NYSCJC but the COJC is even exempt from that state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws.

In California, widespread complaints by litigants that thestate’s Commission on Judicial Performance was protecting bad judges, caused California’s state legislature to order a sweeping audit of the organization in 2016.

Lempa currently lives in Europe where he’s employed as a Manager for Marketing Intelligence Latin America and Canada for Philip Morris, according to his Linkedin profile; an email to Phillip Morris department of public affairs was left unreturned.