Queens Dems nominate candidates for Civil Court race

Peter Lane, Melissa DeBerry and Amish Doshi were nominated by the Queens county democratic party last week to run on the party’s line for Civil court judge in november. Photo by Ali Najmi/courtesy of deberry/Courtesy of Doshi campaign

By Jacob Kaye

The Queens County Democratic Party on Friday nominated a trio of candidates to run for Civil Court in November after a bill signed into law earlier this month by the governor created three new spots on the bench in Queens.

Amish Doshi, Peter F. Lane and Melissa B. DeBerry will appear on the Democratic party’s line in the November general election in the race for the three new vacancies on the borough’s Civil Court bench.

The nominations of Doshi, Lane and DeBerry came about quickly.

About a week before the candidates officially received the party’s nomination, the state legislature sent a bill to Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk that ordered the creation of three new judicial positions in Queens, and another 25 judicial positions in courts throughout the state. Hochul signed the bill into law on July 17 – the same day she received it.

On Friday, the Queens County Democratic Party’s district leaders met at the party’s headquarters in Forest Hills to nominate the candidates. The meeting was mostly a pro forma affair.

The candidates – all of whom had previously applied to run on the party’s line in the recently completed Democratic primary for a pair of vacancies on the Civil Court – had been pre-selected and pre-screened by the party’s chairperson, Rep. Gregory Meeks.

None of the approximately 50 district leaders in attendance on Friday – there are 72 total district leaders in the borough – voiced their opposition to the nominees.

However, very few appeared to know much about the candidates before casting their vote.

District leaders who spoke with the Eagle on the condition of anonymity said that they were first made aware that the Friday meeting would take place a little less than a week before it began. And none had been told the names of the candidates before the start of the meeting. However, the candidates’ resumes were shared with the district leaders prior to the vote.

No other nominations were made.

The Queens County Republican Party had not yet made their nominations to run on their party’s line for the three vacancies as of print time. The party’s district leaders plan to meet to nominate candidates on Monday, party leadership told the Eagle.

The quick turnaround for nominations was by design. State lawmakers waited until after the state’s primaries had long passed to send the bill to the governor. Additionally, the bill itself – which immediately went into effect – only lists the process for nominating candidates for the general election, not the primary.

The law says the positions “shall be filled by election at the November 5, 2024 election, for a term to commence on the first day of January 2025.”

The candidates

If Doshi’s name sounds familiar to voters, that’s because they saw his name on a ballot around a month ago.

Doshi was one of two candidates to receive the party’s backing in the race for one of two Civil Court vacancies earlier this year. In a four way race for the court – the top two vote getters are headed to the general election – Doshi finished last, picking up around 20 percent of the vote.

His poor showing may have been somewhat attributable to his position on the ballot. Doshi was listed last. Sharifa Nasser-Cuellar, the Queens County Democratic Party’s other pick for the race, finished as the top vote getter. She was listed first on the ballot.

But Doshi will now get a second shot at the court after receiving the party’s nomination on Friday.

“I want to thank Chairman Meeks and the Queens Democratic organization for believing in me and nominating me as the Democratic candidate for Civil Court judge,” Doshi said in a statement to the Eagle. “I look forward to bringing my experience as an attorney and CPA to the bench to serve the people of Queens.”

Doshi is the founding member and principal attorney for the Doshi Legal Group. He’s mainly practiced in a number of different financial law areas, including creditor’s rights, bankruptcy and commercial litigation.

Doshi earned his law degree from New York Law School and his undergraduate degree from Queens College. In addition to being an attorney, he is also a certified public accountant.

The attorney also has a presence in Queens’ legal community, serving as one of the co-founders of the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean Bar Association of Queens, which was created in 2017.

DeBerry currently serves as the principal law clerk to Queens Supreme Court Justice Cheree Buggs.

The longtime Southeast Queens resident told the Eagle during an interview in March that she knew that she wanted to be an attorney from a young age. She earned her law degree from Hofstra University and later went on to work for Buggs in the state’s court system. She followed the judge from Family Court to Civil Court to Supreme Court.

During the March interview, DeBerry told the Eagle that becoming a jurist was her “ultimate aspiration.”

Lane got his law degree from St. John’s University School of Law in 1991. After working as an intern in the federal court system, Lane went on to spend a bulk of his career working in the state’s court system.

Lane worked as a principal law clerk to a number of judges in Queens, including the borough’s Surrogate Court judge.

The attorney also previously served as a member of Queens Community Board 7 in Flushing.