Posted on 12/13/2004 5:50:51 AM PST by OESY
When Jerald R. Klein, a Manhattan housing court judge, got a call from a reporter yesterday morning, he had no idea why he was being bothered at home on the weekend.
He did not know that his face was all over eBay. He did not know that he was for sale.
"What are you talking about?" he said. "Yes, I am a housing court judge. But I'm not for sale."
According to a posting on eBay, an online auction house, the 55-year-old judge would go to the highest bidder. After four days, the best offer was $127.50.
The eBay advertisement, titled "Judge for Sale," showed a picture of Judge Klein sitting in a courtroom and grinning at the camera, and then listed a number of accusations criticizing the way the judge dispenses justice.
Free worldwide shipping was even included.
Judge Klein has spent 22 years untangling landlord-tenant disputes in New York City Civil Court. As he suspected, a disgruntled litigant was the behind the advertisement, which had eluded eBay authorities.
That litigant is Janet Schoenberg, who is being evicted on Thursday from her studio apartment in the East Village. She said she created the ad after exhausting all other avenues to attract attention to her case, which she said was being improperly handled by Judge Klein.
"In today's world, this is how people who are not celebrities can get their voice heard," said Ms. Schoenberg.
Ms. Schoenberg, who said that she had never sold anything on eBay and that it was "ridiculously easy" to make the ad, maintained that the listing was intended as a joke.
"I didn't expect anybody to actually bid on this," she said. "It was satire; it was parody."
Ms. Schoenberg posted the ad on Wednesday. By 10:18 yesterday morning, the site had drawn 6,400 hits and 21 bids, which Judge Klein did not find funny.
"I'm outraged that eBay would post this," the judge said from his home on Long Island. "I'd like to know their rules for this. I'd like to know what investigation they did before they put this out there."
EBay conducted no investigation before posting the ad, according to a spokesman, and it never does. Because of the volume of trade - there are more than 30 million listings on eBay, with 3.6 million listings added every day - the company cannot screen advertisements before they are posted on the Internet, said Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman.
"We rely on our traders and the public to point these things out," Mr. Durzy said. EBay is an Internet intermediary between buyers and sellers, for everything from baseballs to Texas ranchland. Mr. Durzy added that the company did use computer filters to identify improper items and advertisements, but said they were not foolproof.
Strange things have surfaced before on eBay, some getting sold, others eventually getting pulled: a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary burned into it; a ghost; a vote from Ohio; even the Internet itself.
But Mr. Durzy said eBay, which is the world's largest Internet retailer, even bigger than Amazon, had never had a judge for sale before.
Within seconds of looking at the ad, Mr. Durzy rattled off a list of rules he said it violated: misleading title, misleading description, unauthorized use of a photo, unauthorized use of a name, illegal product.
"You're not allowed to sell human remains or human beings on eBay," Mr. Durzy explained.
Mr. Durzy also said Judge Klein was listed under the wrong category, maybe a small thing, but another violation nonetheless.
Ms. Schoenberg listed her advertisement under the heading "Sporting Goods, Archery, Arrows, Shafts."
"Shaft has multiple meanings," explained Ms. Schoenberg, who said she once worked as a comedy writer. "Again," she emphasized, "this is parody."
But Mr. Durzy said eBay was no place for parody.
"It's a place for people to buy and sell goods," he said.
Ms. Schoenberg countered that the judge himself was never for sale. In fine print after the list of complaints, in which she accuses Judge Klein of lying and breaking the law, she explained that her posting was a "work of art" and that what was actually for sale was an audiocassette of the judge's proceedings, which are public record. She said the tape proved that she was being wrongly evicted from her rent-controlled studio, where she has lived for the past six years.
But eBay did not buy it.
Within 90 minutes of learning about the ad from a reporter, eBay officials removed it. "It is a thinly veiled personal attack," Mr. Durzy explained.
But before the ad was removed, it had already been posted on dozens of Internet-based message boards, including dozens of sports Web sites, advertising "Crooked judge for sale."
Devereux Chatillon, an expert in First Amendment law at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal, a New York law firm, said that even though the advertisement was gone, it could still spell legal trouble.
"It doesn't look to me like a parody," Ms. Chatillon said. "It looks like angry commentary. And if it's based on statements that are wrong, it could be libelous."
Ms. Schoenberg said it had never occurred to her that what she was doing could get her into trouble.
"I really didn't think of that," she said.
Judge Klein would not comment on the potential libel issues. He said he was going to discuss with his court administrators what to do next.
"Judges are ill equipped to fight eBay," he said, clearly frustrated yesterday afternoon, before the advertisement had been pulled. "How do I fight eBay?"
We have a judge in South Jersey that will bring a lower bid, but he is for sale too I think!
The surprising news would be if you had a judge in New Jersey that wasn't for sale.
Buying a judge, politician or bureaucrat for $127 is cheap. My lawyer costs me near $100 an hour and I don't even get to flog him if he's wrong, let alone take him home and chain him to the barn.
Yeah I thought they were all for sale...
LOL
Ping
Y'all are missing the point. WHO actually BID on said judge??
I don't know anything about this Judge. I don't know if Judges generally are for sale. I do know that there a lot of them who can be rented for short periods in order to determine the outcome of litigation.
I would like to know the details of the eviction.
She's funny!
Go to larger picture Current bid: US $5.50 (Reserve not met)
Time left: 4 days 15 hours
7-day listing
Ends Dec-15-04 10:18:31 PST
Start time: Dec-08-04 10:18:31 PST
History: 5 bids (US $0.01 starting bid)
High bidder: miwarton769 ( 1 )
Item location: New York, New York
United States
Ships to: Worldwide
Shipping costs: Check item description and payment instructions or contact seller for details
Shipping, payment details and return policy
Seller information
emergencytenantprotectionact ( 0 )
Feedback Score: 0 feedback reviews
Member since Dec-05-04 in United States
Read feedback comments
Add to Favorite Sellers
Ask seller a question
View seller's other items
Safe Buying Tips
Description
NYC Civil Court Judge Jerald R. Klein teaches you how to:
Abuse the authority of your position to get your attorney friends the results they desire
Circumvent the random judicial selection process so you can preside over cases for your attorney friends and their families
Coerce unrepresented litigants into relinquishing their legal rights
Break laws and evict tenants so your landlord friends can more than double the rent on their apartments
Proceed with cases you know have no legal basis
Proceed with cases that are not among the legal remedies of your attorney friends
Prevent litigants from having a full and fair trial by pretending you don't know the meaning of common legal phrases
Pretend it's cross-examination when it's really direct examination
Deny that testimony given by a witness was ever even said
Feed witnesses answers to prevent them from giving damaging testimony
Ignore confessions of criminal acts made by a witness while under oath
Attempt to induce witnesses to absent themselves from testifying by making threats you know are baseless
Threaten litigants with rulings not applicable to the instant proceeding
Offer to 'take care of' future cases for your attorney friends and their families
Prevent documents from being entered into evidence if they will damage "your" attorney's case
Announce before the trial begins that you will not grant counterclaims which would be unfavorable for "your" attorney's family
Tell "your" attorney their future remedies under the guise of telling the other party what might happen at some future time
Help "your" attorney continue to violate the law so they can get to "the next step" in their series of lawsuits against the other party
Lie to litigants about the law
Assume an adversarial role and advocate for "your" attorney
Threaten litigants with exorbitant and baseless money judgments in order to coerce "settlements"
Tell litigants they will be ordered to pay the entire baseless money judgment to the court before they can appeal your illegal decision
Make sure there's no record of your egregious misconduct -- Oops!
Small enough to fit in your pocket!
Free Shipping!!
A public servant for sale - with free shipping included? I missed out on a good deal! (laughing)
We have to have one!!!
If I buy one judge my wife will want two. (Just in case the neighbors get one)
I can't speak to your location. But here, a good restaurant meal runs about $30 a head, a small engagement ring might set you back a grand or so, and a wedding can cost whatever you want to pay. It could cost in the tens of thousands to bride a judge around here ;)
Sheesh, can't even find it in cache. What a grouchy judge :P
When my husband and his ex got their divorce it was uncontested, so they decided to just hire one attorney to file paperwork for them. They had resolved their custody and property issues themselves in their separation agreement.
So his ex hired the attorney and my husband paid his half and thought that that was the end of it. Several months later, his ex started demanding more money, saying that the attorney was charging her more than he had said he would in the beginning. My husband refused to pay until a list of specific charges were given to him. They never provided a list or anything in writing up until they started threatening to take him to court.
When they went to court, the case was heard in the judge's chambers. My husband didn't hire an attorney because he believed that it was obvious that he was right. When my husband explained his position and asked how he could be expected to pay when he didn't know what he was paying for and the amount varied from day to day, the judge told him that he should have given his ex-wife any amount that she requested and that if he found out later that he had overpaid, then he should have requested a refund.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.