You Just Can’t Make This Shit Up!

Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Edward H. Lehner said in a decision Wednesday that the defendants had unconstitutionally abused their power by depriving the judges of a pay hike for almost 10 years.

Lehner noted that the judges have been denied a pay hike because state legislators linked a judicial salary increase to one for themselves. He said this linkage is illegal.

He ordered the state to raise judicial pay to reflect the amount the cost of living has jumped since 1998. He also told the state to consider an appropriate provision for retroactivity. He did not suggest any amounts.

The governor’s office was exploring its legal options after the judge’s ruling, spokesman Errol Cockfield said.

“While the governor has long supported salary increases for judges, today’s opinion flies in the face of the state Constitution, which makes clear that only the Legislature has the power to set judicial salaries,” he said in a statement.

The state likely will apply for a stay and then appeal the ruling. Whichever side loses can _ and is likely to _ petition the Court of Appeals in Albany. The appeals process typically takes several months.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s office was reviewing the decision and had no immediate comment, spokesman Dan Weiller said. The attorney general’s office referred calls to the governor’s office.

Lehner ruled on a lawsuit by four judges: Susan Larabee, of Manhattan Family Court; Michael Nenno, of Civil Court in Cattaraugus County; Patricia Nunez, of Brooklyn Criminal Court, and Geoffrey Wright, of Manhattan Civil Court.

Chief Judge Judith Kaye, the state’s highest-paid judge at $156,000 a year, is leading another lawsuit against the Legislature to secure raises, and she has warned judges not to protest through action from the bench.

Lehner has said judicial pay has been so ravaged by inflation in the last nine years that a first-year associate at a large New York City law firm would have to take a pay cut to become the state’s chief judge.

He acknowledged that he would benefit by his own decision, but he cited the “rule of necessity,” which says that when every judge who is eligible to hear a case faces a conflict of interest, then it is proper for one of those judges to hear the case.

One of the lead attorneys on behalf of the judges, George Bundy Smith, a former state Court of Appeals judge, called Lehner’s ruling “significant.”

“I think it has great meaning,” he said. “The judge found there had been linkage between the salaries of the judges and the legislators and that was an abuse of discretion.”

He said he hopes that within the 90 days the issue will be resolved.

“If they don’t go along that will be a tragedy for our form of government,” he said. “They can’t just say, ‘You can issue decrees, and we’re not going to enforce them.”’