State orders removal of Queens judge over misconduct findings

Queens Civil Court Judge Joseph Kasper was ordered to be removed from the bench by the Commission on Judicial Conduct last week. File photo via Kasper

By Jacob Kaye

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct last week ordered a Queens Civil Court judge to be removed from the bench, marking the first time the top level of discipline has been doled out by the commission to a judge in the World’s Borough in nearly a decade.

Queens Civil Court Judge Joseph Kasper was found to have improperly handled his transition from attorney to judge in 2022 in a number of ways.

Running afoul of the state’s judiciary laws, Kasper continued to run his law practice after being elected as a judge. He also failed to return money owed to his clients that was being held in his escrow account and allowed a paralegal with a criminal history to pose as an attorney and run his practice in his stead. The commission also said that Kasper failed to file a mandatory financial disclosure statement.

The Commission on Judicial Conduct said that as a result, Kasper should be removed from office.

Kasper, the lone Republican judge on the bench in Queens, and his attorney didn’t dispute that he committed the misconduct described in the commission’s 69-page report released Thursday.

But they took issue with the level of discipline the commission imposed.

“This decision is without precedent,” said Richard Emery, Kasper’s attorney and a founding partner at Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. “Removal is the last resort. It is not the usual sanction for misconduct of a judge, but only misconduct which threatens the public.”

“In this case, Judge Kasper has done a creditable job on the bench, he has virtually no backlog, he's not been criticized in any way for his conduct on the bench,” he added. “The alleged misconduct relates to his misplaced loyalty to his former clients when he was surprisingly elected.”

After unsuccessfully running for a spot on the bench in Queens for a number of years, Kasper was elected to the Civil Court in 2021. His victory was a surprise, even to him. Kasper, a mainstay in the Queens County Republican Party, defeated Democratic nominee, Paul Vallone, the late city councilman and member of one of Queens' former political dynasties.

“I feel like I have to poke myself with a pin right now to wake up,” Kasper told the Eagle after his victory. “To quote William F. Buckley, ‘If I win, I’ll demand a recount.’”

But even as he made the transition to the bench, Kasper allegedly had a difficult time letting go of his old life.

While Kasper transferred a number of his cases to Michael Mossa, an attorney he shared an office with who also is a perennial Republican judicial candidate, he also left attorney work to Janice Bar, his longtime friend and paralegal.

Though Bar is not an attorney, she allegedly performed tasks only a lawyer licensed to practice law in New York is allowed to complete, the commission said.

Sometimes, she appeared to purposefully mislead the courts and clients, indicating that she was an attorney in her signature.

“We are troubled by respondent’s facilitation of and failure to supervise Janice Bar as she improperly performed legal services for clients who had retained respondent as an attorney before he became a judge,” the commission’s report read.

Kasper allegedly paid Bar $600 a week and continued to pay rent for his former law office where she worked for around two years after he officially took to the bench.

The commission said Kasper “should have known” Bar was improperly advertising her qualifications.

According to the report, Bar sent nearly 40 emails to Kasper that included the email signature “Janice Bar, Attorney at Law.”

Bar also notarized a number of documents for Kasper, even though she was not allowed to do so, having previously been convicted of falsely notarizing a document.

Emery said that while Kasper admits retaining Bar amounted to misconduct, he did so out of loyalty.

“He was still committed to her as a person and as a friend, and he kept her on while he was a judge to wind down these cases,” Emery said.

The commission also charged Kasper with allegedly failing to keep track of around $17,000 sitting in his attorney escrow accounts in the two-year period following his election.

Though he located around $10,000 of funds meant to be paid to clients, he couldn’t account for over $7,000 as of 2024, the commission said.

Taken together, the commission said the charges were enough to remove Kasper from the bench.

“The totality of the evidence established that respondent’s repeated violations of the rules were egregious and he is unfit for the bench,” the commission’s report read.

But Emery, who has vowed to appeal the determination, argued that the severe discipline wasn’t warranted.

“[Kasper’s misconduct] did not in any way threaten the public, his actions on the bench were never an issue,” said Emery, who formerly served as a member of the commission. “The commission never alleged any misdeeds or misconduct on the bench, and it never alleged that he benefited himself in any way by his use of his judicial office. That's usually the criteria for removal, one or the other.”

Though Kasper’s term isn’t set to end until the last day of 2031, he will hit the mandatory retirement age of 70 at the end of the year.

Should the commission’s determination stand, Kasper will become only the third judge from Queens to be removed from office by the commission.

In 2018, the commission ordered the removal of Civil Court Judge Terrence O’Connor, who dismissed several cases because an attorney said, “okay,” in response to his witness' testimony, a phrase O’Connor claimed could lead the witness.

O’Connor also was found to be hostile toward a number of attorneys appearing before him. In one instance, he berated an attorney who had said, “Thank you,” because he thought they were being sarcastic.

The only other Queens judge to be removed was Laura Blackburne, who presided over Queens’ Treatment Court.

Blackburne was removed in 2005 after she was found to have abused her authority as a judge by ordering a court officer to escort a defendant out of the courthouse through the back stairway in order to elude a police detective who was waiting to make a lawful arrest.