November 17, 2024

Judge Denies an Effort at Removal in A.I.G. Case

Mr. Greenberg and his co-defendant, Howard Smith, A.I.G.’s former chief financial officer, said that Justice Charles E. Ramos of New York State Supreme Court should disqualify himself because he had made improper statements and relied on inadmissible evidence. Justice Ramos, however, denied the motion in a ruling released on Monday.

In the 2005 suit, the state accused Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Smith of using bogus transactions to distort A.I.G.’s reported financial condition.

On March 1, an appeals court delayed Justice Ramos’s plan to start a trial May 2 and said it would hear arguments in the case during its May term.

The motion was denied “in light of the appellate division stay of this trial pending appeal,” the judge wrote. “This motion may be renewed once the stay has expired.”

In their motion, lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Smith argued that the judge had repeatedly demonstrated an “intention to use improper and inadmissible evidence in adjudication of the case.” At a hearing last April, Justice Ramos said the attorney general’s office had put together “a devastating case.”

The New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said in court papers that the bias claim had been “manufactured.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1d10d7549b0c4a5e4493e32492508a8b