Opinion ID: 2021330
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Petitioner as Kings County Surrogate

Text: Petitioner was elected Surrogate in 1996, not long after the 1992 joint report, the 1993 statutory amendment and the Attorney General's 1994 agreement with the Kings County Surrogate, all specifically aimed at ending abuses in documenting fees for counsel to the public administrator. Upon taking office in January 1997, petitioner formed a committee that conducted a public search for a new public administrator. Petitioner also replaced the firm that had for several decades served as counsel to the Public Administrator, but he did so without any search or interview process, appointing his long-time friend and law school classmate Louis Rosenthal to that lucrative position. [2] Rosenthal had helped to raise funds for petitioner's election campaign. His experience in Surrogate's Court practice was limited. As the record reflects, in the years between January 1997 and mid-May 2002, when an estate came within his purview Rosenthal would generally conduct a review of its assets and liabilities, at which point he would file an initial accounting. Upon filing, the Surrogate's Court chief clerk would calculate eight percent of the anticipated final value of the estate, and petitioner would approve 60% of that sum. After the accounting, the estate would settle its debts, conduct kinship hearings (if necessary) and make initial distributions to heirs. Counsel would then submit a final decree, which included a line for an additional fee request. That additional fee request was also generally calculated by the Surrogate's Court chief clerk, though on many occasions by Rosenthal himself, frequently worked out on a post-it note attached to the final decree. The additional fee was calculated to bring the total awarded to a percentage  generally eight percent  of the total value of the estate. [3] From January 1997 until mid-May 2002, petitioner never required Rosenthal to submit an affidavit of legal services before approving a fee request, nor did he determine fees based on consideration of the statutory factors specified in SCPA 1108 (2) (c). While petitioner claimed to have coincidentally considered factors similar to those codified in section 1108, he repeatedly acknowledged during these proceedings that prior to May 2002 he was unaware of the statutory requirements. He testified that he only skimmed through the Surrogate's Court Procedure Act, never reading the entire Act  the statutory basis for his office and jurisdiction  claiming that it was quite voluminous and characterizing his failure to pay greater attention to the statute as an oversight. Instead of following the statutory prescription, petitioner relied on the calculations of Rosenthal and the chief clerk as they appeared on the post-it notes. Petitioner did not individually review the estate files himself. In no instance did he reject or reduce a fee request submitted by counsel, and there is no evidence that he ever questioned a request or sought additional information before ruling on it. As to the application of eight percent, petitioner maintained that he inherited from his predecessor, Surrogate Bernard Bloom, the practice of awarding fees representing a relatively high portion of the estate, because that was the way it had been done in the Surrogate's Court for 30 plus years. However, he never discussed counsel fees with the surrogates of the other New York City counties, nor did he ask any other counsels how their fees were determined. Further, though the chief clerk knew of the 1988 and 1994 agreements with the Attorney General limiting fees, petitioner claimed he did not know the content of those agreements. Between January 1997 and December 2002, petitioner awarded Rosenthal a total of $8,613,009.35 in legal fees. Of that amount, about $1,935,000 was net income to Rosenthal as counsel to the Public Administrator, apart from other estate-related fees (which totaled $458,824.66 between 1997 and 2002) and his law firm earnings. In the spring of 2002, petitioner learned that the New York Daily News was about to run an exposé of the Kings County Surrogate, revealing petitioner's practice of approving counsel's fee requests without affidavits or individualized review of the cases. In anticipation of the story, petitioner asked Rosenthal to submit affidavits of legal services, retrospectively detailing the work done on each estate. After petitioner received these affidavits, however, not a single fee was adjusted.