Bronx Surrogate Judge Lee Holzman keeps his job despite breaking the rules

In one of the worst rulings in its history, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct decreed that a judge may stay on the bench despite giving a pass to a lawyer friend who’d grabbed hundreds of thousand of dollars in excessive fees from the estates of the dead.

The panel let Bronx Surrogate Judge Lee Holzman off with merely a censure, rather than order his removal from the bench, sympathetically citing his impending retirement.

As surrogate judge, Holzman presided over the disposition of estates. His employees include a counsel whose duties center on cases in which people have died without leaving a will. For compensation, the counsel draws money from the estates according to percentage formulas set by law.

When Holzman’s counsel, Michael Lippman, got caught taking far larger amounts than he was entitled to, Holzman kept him on the job. That way, Lippman was supposed to earn more fees so he could repay the filched funds.

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Bronx Surrogate Judge Lee Holzman keeps his job despite breaking the rules