A state judicial oversight commission ordered the removal of a Queens Civil Court judge after finding he continued practicing law after taking the bench, allowed an unlicensed twice-convicted felon to run his law office, mishandled client funds and repeatedly failed to comply with financial disclosure rules.
The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct announced Thursday that Civil Court Judge Joseph Kasper should be removed from office.
“A full-time judge is prohibited from practicing law,” said Commission Administrator Robert Tembeckjian. “That Judge Kasper continued to do so for two years after taking the bench was bad enough.”
“That he also facilitated a felon’s masquerade as a lawyer is even more shocking,” he added. “Such contempt for the rule of law is inimical to the role of a judge and requires his removal from office.”
Richard Emery, Kasper’s lawyer, admitted his client “did commit misconduct” but maintained it was nothing that should have led to removal.
“He did not benefit in any way himself, and nothing about his misconduct relates to his actions on the bench,” Emery told The City Reporter.
He acknowledged that Kasper continued some private practice cases at his old law office before getting elected to the bench in 2022. Full-time judges in New York are barred from practicing law, according to Office of Court Administration regulations.
In one case, Kasper told a former client that she had to pay him $1,000 in cash before he would complete her divorce, according to the commission’s 69-page report.
Emery said he continued doing the work as a misguided loyalty to his clients.
“The irony here is that his practice of law, while he was a full-time judge, was based solely on his personal commitment to his former clients and his loyalty to them to wind up their matters as cheaply as possible, so that they would not be affected by his election to the bench,” Emery contended.
The Lawyer Who Wasn’t
As for the unlicensed lawyer, Kasper let his longtime friend and paralegal, Janice Bar, to file at least 22 legal documents under his name, according to the commission.
In one particularly egregious allegation of misconduct, Bar pretended to be an attorney in open court, examined a witness, and signed court documents as “Janice Bar, Esq,” according to the commission. When she told Kasper about it afterward, he reportedly just said, “It’s a good thing you were there,” and did nothing, the commission report said.
Kasper and Bar have been friends for years and in the 1990s they served as Republican Party co-district leaders, where she repeatedly supported his campaigns for the bench.
In 2016, she was convicted of two felonies: forgery and making an apparently sworn false statement.
Emery, who previously served on the commission for 13 years, argued that the allegations against her did not directly involve Kasper.
“That was not his misconduct; that was her misconduct.,” he said. “And if anything, to the extent that he enabled it, it was as a lawyer, not as a judge.”
The commission also said Kasper left roughly $17,200 sitting in his attorney escrow accounts for over two years after taking the bench. As of 2024 he still couldn’t account for over $7,000 of it, according to the commission.
Kasper spent years running for the judicial position in Queens before he beat Democrat Paul Vallone, a former City Council member and a son of Peter Vallone, who served as Council speaker during the 1990s. It was the first time in nearly 60 years that a Republican won that seat, according to City Limits.
Kasper had only about three months left on the bench.
His term expires on Dec. 31, 2031, but because he turns 70 in 2026, Kasper would no longer be able to serve as a judge past this year.
Emery vowed to appeal the commission’s decision to the state’s highest court, which has final say.
“It’s beyond the pale that this case is ripe for removal,” he argued. “It’s completely abhorrent. Nothing in this case involves anything he did on the bench.”
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