Series shed light on court patronage

To the editor:

The Riverdale Press recently published a four-part series on court patronage that confirmed my suspicions that, in Bronx courts, justice is not blind. 

The articles were based on an investigation done by The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism class taught by Tom Robbins. According to the investigation, judges appoint fiduciaries, such as guardianship, evaluator and receivers, for estates and foreclosures. These appointees represent individuals unable to care for themselves, including the elderly and incapacitated. Also, they manage distressed properties facing foreclosure. 

After reading the articles, I became concerned about how vulnerable we are to becoming victims of the justice system because of this courthouse patronage. According to the investigation, judges had a list of a hundred names to select, but they repeatedly appoint the same people: Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, state Sen. Jeff Klein, Counsel Howard Vargas and attorney and real estate business owner Lorraine Coyle, wife of longtime councilman and one-time attorney general Oliver Koppell. They all are active and prominent members of the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club, which backed and helped judges ascend to their Bronx court positions.    

The same people were appointed regardless of their past performance or perhaps being unethical or of a conflict of interest. According to the report, Mrs. Coyle was appointed to be the receiver — after a one-day receiver course — of a building at 876 Bryant Ave., in Hunts Point.  Under her supervision, according to the Press article, the building vendors were not being paid and the building got about 200 violations. Regardless of her performance, Mrs. Coyle got so many court appointments that The Riverdale Press used the headline: “Lorraine Coyle is the queen of court appointments” in its March 7 issue.