Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Legal Blog Watch

Legal News

: Legal Blog Watch

Brooklyn Judge: 'I Know You've Been Sworn ... ' but I Don't Care

By Eric Lipman

Hot on the heels of the Judge Judy profile, TV court is getting some attention from real-life courts. A July 8 opinion out of New York Supreme Court, Kings County (aka Brooklyn) chastised a New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development Administrative Hearing Officer for relying in part on a woman's "testimony" from an episode of "The People's Court" in denying her succession rights to her deceased mother's rent-stabilized apartment. As this article from the New York Law Journal notes, Justice Francois Rivera held that "The People's Court" is not a court at all: "The show has voluntary participants, who are not actors, who speak about disputes on a stage that resembles a court. The words or statements uttered by these participants are not testimony. They are neither sworn nor reliable." Now hold on, Justice Rivera. At least in the Wapner days, episodes of TPC began with a shot of the litigants raising their right hands and taking an oath of some sort. And Wikipedia and I both recall that "Judge Wapner would greet his litigants by saying, 'I know you've been sworn. I've read your complaint ... '" That was good enough for the hearing officer, who...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on July 19, 2010 (boomark / email).