Losing Party Sues Law Firm for Discussing Job Offer with Judge
A losing party in a business dispute is suing its opponent’s law firm for offering a job to a New Jersey judge before he had distributed his final ruling in the case.
The suit names as defendants the law firm Herten, Burstein, Sheridan, Cevasco, Bottinelli, Litt & Harz, with offices in New York and Hackensack, N.J., and name partner Thomas Herten, the New Jersey Law Journal reports. It seeks payment of the losing party’s attorney fees for the trial and appeal, as well as punitive damages.
The plaintiff, Michael Cupo, won a new trial after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in September that the job talks with Judge Gerald Escala of Bergen County created an appearance of impropriety, the story says. The job discussions began the day after Escala issued a final decision ordering the defendant to pay Cupo damages of more than $700,000, but before the parties received the final order in the mail, the story says. There was no evidence, however, that the job offer altered the ruling, according to a previous New Jersey Law Journal story.
The suit claims Cupo was a third-party beneficiary to the contract between the law firm and his opponent in the case. “Herten’s got an obligation not to injure my client,” Cupo’s lawyer, Jeffrey Pocaro, told the publication.
