 |
| Former Judge Martin Colin and his Elizabeth “Betsy” Savitt. |
“Corruption and collusion of judges and lawyers in Delray Beach for
financial gain” centered around dubious professional guardian Elizabeth
“Betsy” Savitt and her husband, former Circuit Judge Martin Colin,
according to a report never before made public by Palm Beach County’s
guardianship watchdog.
Once again, a major institution in what is known nationwide as “Corruption County” stands accused of betraying the public trust.
 |
| Judge David French |
Colin signed orders in Savitt’s cases. The couple’s friend — Circuit
Judge David French — oversaw the majority of her cases. And lawyers
appointed by Colin steered lucrative guardianships to Savitt while
asking Colin to approve tens of thousands of dollars in fees in other
cases before him. Other judges approved questionable fees or appointed
Savitt under “unusual” circumstances.
These allegations are detailed in a
25-page report
by the Inspector General of the Clerk & Comptroller’s Office and
obtained by The Palm Beach Post on Friday. The State Attorney’s Office
investigated but found no evidence of a crime.
Families of Savitt’s incapacitated wards — often seniors — complained
in vain for years that a group of lawyers and judges were against them
at every turn as they watched their loved ones suffer and lose their
life savings.
The IG report stands as vindication for families who watched slack-jawed as numerous judges dismissed their
concerns about retainers, over-billing and bogus litigation to generate fees. Remarkably, Savitt continues as a guardian.
Another investigation detailed in the report began in 2014 again found “major violations of guardianship law” by Savitt.
Despite
years of investigation by authorities, none took public action until
The Post exposed Savitt and Colin in its January 2016 investigation,
Guardianships: A Broken Trust.
The report,
delivered to the state Office of Public and Professional Guardians in
December, is the basis for the first action by any authority to take
Savitt out of the guardianship field, which poured thousands of dollars
into hers and the judge’s household.
The guardianship office is
seeking, in effect, to prohibit her from being a professional guardian
in this county. It also seeks to require her to pay back the nearly
$200,000 she earned from fees in 13 cases involving at least one of the
judges or lawyers.
Chief Judge Jeffrey Colbath, in the wake of The
Post investigation in 2016, made sweeping changes to the county
guardianship system but didn’t stop Savitt from practicing. He ordered
mass recusals from south county judges, transferred Colin to another
division and sent Savitt’s cases to the North County Courthouse.
Colin
announced he would not run for re-election and retired at the end of
2016. French is retiring at the end of this year but not before he
appointed Savitt to another case, thumbing his nose at Colbath’s
efforts.
Colin and Savitt did not respond to an email request for
comment. French’s office said the judge declined to comment. And a
spokeswoman for Chief Judge Krista Marx said she was unavailable for
comment.
All of this might have been nipped in the bud if the state Judicial Qualifications Commission
acted on complaints
about Colin in 2008 that claimed he was favoring divorce attorneys who
represented Savitt. The JQC failed to seek even a reprimand and within
two years, Savitt was a professional guardian with power over the
finances, the medical care, and the housing of incapacitated seniors and
disabled adults.
The system works
 |
| Palm Beach County Clerk & Comptroller Sharon R. Bock. |
Sharon Bock, the
county’s Clerk & Comptroller, said the IG report shows the process
worked because of the independence of her office to investigate
guardianship complaints.
The initial Savitt investigation was kick-started by a call to the
clerk’s fraud hotline in 2012. Another investigation commenced in 2014
with several more hotline tips and finally coalesced with a complaint to
the state’s revamped guardianship office in 2016, within days of it
getting the authority to police professional guardians.
“We
believe the work product we are turning out is making a difference and
has made a difference already in Palm Beach County,” Bock said. “We have
been doing these reports since 2011.”
Carol Berkowitz, executive
director of the Office of Public and Professional Guardians, said that
there is enormous respect for many professional guardians across Florida
who work tirelessly to support vulnerable adults, but added:
“It
is extremely important that we act when a complaint investigation finds
that a guardian has violated their statutory responsibilities or is not
acting in the best interest of their ward.”
Criminal investigation
The
IG report states Savitt’s case was referred to the public corruption
unit in State Attorney Dave Aronberg’s office, which also issued a
subpoena to ascertain whether a senior’s money was used to satisfy
Savitt’s outstanding $308,000 mortgage. Both the state attorney and IG
said it was not.
“This investigation focused on whether the
relationship between Judge Colin and Elizabeth Savitt resulted in Savitt
receiving an unfair financial advantage assigned to her or if she or
her associated attorneys received unfair favorable rulings from Judge
Colin,” according to a memorandum issued by the state attorney’s office
on Nov. 21, 2016, and quoted in the report.
The state attorney found “no evidence to support any of the allegations.”
The
IG commented that even though the state attorney’s standard of proof
was higher, there was circumstantial and anecdotal information of
criminal corruption and collusion. He said it was unclear whether the
state attorney’s standard was “beyond a reasonable doubt” or a
“probability of obtaining a conviction” yet it concurred with the state
attorney’s conclusion.
Anthony Palmieri, the deputy inspector
general for the clerk who authored the IG report, said, “My sole focus
was on Betsy Savitt as a professional guardian and her conflicts and
what her duties were and what her responsibilities were. And yet that
did kind of leach into Judge Colin and maybe into Judge French. My focus
was not on the judiciary.”
More than a dozen judges
More than a dozen judges are part of the report.
French
oversaw 16 of Savitt’s cases. He appointed her to cases, approved her
fees as well as the fees of her attorneys — sometimes over the vigorous
objections from families of the ward.
The IG was especially interested in a vacation trip French and his wife took with Savitt and Colin to the Bahamas.
The blockbuster report found Circuit Judges
Charles Burton,
James Martz,
Rosemarie Scher, and
Leonard Hanser all appointed Savitt to guardianships in some fashion.
Judge Scher also approved an
improperly filed petition by Savitt’s lawyer, the report states.
Circuit Judges
Jack Cook and Diana Lewis — now off the bench — were involved in cases where the IG found Colin paved the way for his wife’s appointment.
And
Judge Edward Garrison
approved a fee request from one of Savitt’s lawyers that was $5,000
more than requested. Fees for attorneys are taken from the ward’s money.
Marx, French and Scher, along with Circuit Judges Howard Coates and Jessica Ticktin
approved $21,500 in retainers taken by Savitt from her wards’ banking
accounts that the report said violates Florida guardianship law.
Circuit Judge Peter Blanc, the chief judge in 2012, received the initial verbal report finding a conflict of interest.
Blanc
told The Post he spoke with Colin and told him not to preside over any
of his wife’s cases. Colin testified at an administrative hearing on
Thursday it was he who initiated contact with Blanc. It didn’t matter.
Colin admitted on the stand that he signed several orders in his wife’s
cases, claiming it was an accident.
Judge Marx,
who was sitting in the Probate Division at the time, is quoted in the
report admonishing Savitt in court for taking a retainer, saying: “It
seems you are asking for forgiveness rather than permission.” Marx,
however, approved the $8,000 retainer anyway.
Colbath, as part of
his guardianship reforms, prohibited taking of fees from wards prior to
judicial approval. Palmieri said that in the 2,000 guardianship cases
he’s investigated statewide, only Savitt took fees before prior judicial
approval.
‘Unusual circumstances’
Judge Jeffrey Dana
Gillen appointed Savitt under “unusual” circumstances when no parties
had asked for her to be a guardian for senior Frances Berkowitz.
Savitt’s name
seemed to come out of nowhere. The two lawyers hadn’t recommended her and one even said, “I don’t think Judge Gillen did (recommend Savitt) either.”
The clerk noted, however, that the day before Savitt was appointed,
an email had gone out
that gave Judge Colin and his judicial assistant “an opportunity to
discuss the case with Judge Gillen or Judge Gillen’s JA.” The IG has not
substantiated whether Colin or his JA read the email.
Former
attorneys for Berkowitz then tried to remove Savitt as guardian, arguing
that her appointment was improper. They also claimed that $400,000 was
missing from Berkowitz’s bank accounts.
Gillen’s judicial assistant said Friday that he was reviewing the report and would have a comment next week.
In
one of the more remarkable sections of the IG report, Savitt is said to
have been “the driving factor” for guardianship reform by the Florida
Legislature in 2015.
The new state guardianship office selected
Savitt, though, as the first guardian against whom it is seeking
sanctions. It accused her of conflict of interest and failing to
act in good faith,
contrary to her wards’ best interest. After the hearing last week,
Administrative Law Judge Mary Li Creasy said she will issue a
recommendation on sanctions in about a month.
Savitt’s attorney,
Ellen Morris, tried without success to keep the report from being
entered as evidence at the hearing, saying in a motion that it contained
“statements and conclusions that are highly objectionable throughout.”
Creasy
denied that motion and by accepting the report into evidence paved the
way for its release by the guardianship office on Friday.
Savitt
invoked spousal privilege at the hearing so she wouldn’t have to
disclose conversations she had with her husband about her cases.
Twyla Sketchley,
a veteran guardianship attorney in Tallahassee, testified that the
spousal privilege went to the heart of the conflict of interest.
“If
I’m a guardian and I’m married to the judge, I can go home at night and
over the dinner table, I can discuss my cases and what I need and how
horrible these parties are, and none of that can be disclosed to any
other parties in a proceeding,” Sketchley said. “You have a special
relationship with that judge that no one else in that courtroom can or
could have.”
Colin testified that the crux of the state’s conflict of interest case against his wife was “nonsense.”
“I
had no role in the cases that she got appointed on,” Colin said. “That
is not a process that would even take place if someone has an
understanding of how one gets guardianship cases.”
Colin, though,
said he was friends with all the other probate judges who oversaw his
wife’s cases. He also said lawyers and families chose Savitt as
guardian, though many times those very lawyers appeared in front of him
in other cases and relied upon Colin to approve their fees.
One of those attorneys was Clifford Hark, who was hired by families seeking guardianships and would recommend Savitt.
The
IG investigated but couldn’t prove or disprove that Savitt’s
appointments and the fact that she didn’t object to his legal fees was
“quid pro quo.”
Hark was also accused of steering cases to Savitt.
The Boca Raton attorney has denied assisting Savitt in establishing
herself as a guardian.
Judge Garrison signed an order of fees for
Hark of senior Helen O’Grady’s case for $14,689 when the amount sought
was $5,000 less. Colin had transferred the guardianship directly to
Garrison because Garrison was presiding over the probate case.
Garrison also ordered Savitt to return $30,000 she took from O’Grady’s estate to be
“held in trust” by her and her attorney.
 |
| Attorney Sheri Hazeltine |
That attorney, Sheri Hazeltine, told The Post that Colin asked her to
represent his wife in 2010 and that she felt “there was a natural
measure of fear involved” in complying with the request. The report said
Colin appointed Hazeltine to two cases in which the lawyer paved the
way for Savitt to be appointed guardian.
Savitt’s attorney has
argued that the guardianship office does not have jurisdiction over any
case prior to the Legislature endowing it with regulatory powers in
March 2016.
French, however, gave the office a perfect opening. In
January 2017, after Colbath had transferred all of Savitt’s cases from
him to the North County Courthouse, French appointed her to a pro bono
case involving senior Mavis Samms. Savitt was required to take a pro
bono case to be included on the new wheel for random appointments of
guardians.
Samms’ daughter said Savitt allowed the senior’s home to go into foreclosure, according to
court documents.
Thomas Mayes, who fought Savitt in the guardianship of his
mother, Helen O’Grady, said he felt the attorneys were complicit in
generating bogus litigation in order to soak the life savings of the
incapacitated seniors “until there is nothing left.”
“I am
wondering if Betsy and her cronies would have to pay back the families?”
said Mayes of Boynton Beach. “Hopefully they will see that she was out
for herself and her cronies.”
Fees taken before judge’s OK
The accusations from families against
professional guardian Elizabeth Savitt include missing money,
overbilling and unnecessary litigation to generate fees. Here are some
of them:
- Kansas schoolteacher Helen O’Grady, 83: Elizabth Savitt took $1,724
without prior court approval and before doing any work in the
guardianship case and then when O’Grady died, took $30,000 to be “held in trust” by her and attorney Sheri Hazeltine. A judge ordered them to give the money back.
- New York accountant Robert Paul Wein, 89: Savitt acknowledged she took about $17,000 for her fees and a retainer of $8,000 from Wein’s accounts without prior court permission.
- Chicago-area decorator Lorraine Hilton, then 94: Savitt failed to
secure a bank account, which allowed it to be accessed by one of the
ward’s sons, who wrote two checks totaling $49,685 for
real estate, according to court documents. She also took a $2,000
retainer without prior court approval and before doing any work.
- A Delray Beach nursing administrator Carla Simmonds:
Savitt attempted to draw fees from the stroke victim’s $640,000 trust
and then asked the court to allow her to drain her $46,000 IRA to pay
fees for about one-quarter of its worth. Her caretaker paid $13,300 of
his own money to Savitt and her lawyer to get them to withdraw from the
case. Savitt initially took a $2,500 retainer without prior court
approval.
- Retired Deerfield Beach plumber Albert Vassallo Sr., 88: Savitt got a
$3,000 retainer without prior court approval. She placed the senior
with a daughter who siphoned off $130,000
from her dad’s savings, forcing the guardianship action by a sibling.
When Vassallo passed away, Savitt tried to funnel an additional $54,000
from his estate to the daughter, court documents show.
What The Post Found
The Post has been reporting for two years on guardian Elizabeth
Savitt’s conflict of interest while her husband, Martin Colin, served on
the bench. The Post’s initial investigation in 2016 prompted widespread changes in the guardianship system in Palm Beach County.
Full Article & Source:
Report: Savitt involved with ‘corruption, collusion of judges’
See Also:
Judge Martin Colin had a hand in his wife’s guardianship cases, state says
