Federal Judiciary

Court of Claims Justice Faviola A. Soto was reversed for jumping to the conclusion that Barbara Lapidus had only herself to blame for the fact that she was locked up for more than six years in prison when she was supposed to have served just a one-year term.

A court clerk started the chain of events that left Lapidus behind bars for so much longer than necessary. She and a boyfriend where charged in 1987 with felony assault, and he alone was convicted. But the clerk inadvertently recorded the verdict and sentence imposed upon him on the line of the court file designated for her.