Jim Goes to Family Court

The Family Court in New York State is the court that handles a variety of private matters, including juvenile delinquency, persons in need of supervision, and matters relating to child custody, and support of dependents.  The court was formerly known as the Children's Court but became the Family Court in 1962.  Among the cases frequently heard are petitions brought by the county social services department seeking to obtain financial assistance for persons receiving public assistance.  These “welfare cases” as they were known, are usually brought against the father of an out-of-wedlock child or a divorced or separated husband who has failed to support his former spouse or children.  The Family Court has the authority to determine responsibility and direct the terms of support in an appropriate case.  The court has the power to enforce its orders by a contempt order, including remanding a person who fails to comply with jail.

Family Court proceedings are supposed to be private.  Unlike other courts, the public is not entitled to view its proceedings or access its case records.  Family Courts usually have relatively small courtrooms, frequently located in the county courthouses in upstate New York counties.  Cases are staggered to provide the necessary privacy.

Unlike Rensselaer County which housed its Family Court in an appropriate facility and heard cases from all fourteen towns and two cities, the Albany County Family Court, in the early 1960s, used an open area in the old (since remodeled) Albany County courthouse for its hearings.  In further violation of privacy, then Family Court judge Robert J. Laffin, a former Albany Police Court judge, “rode the circuit” on Friday mornings once or twice a month, stopping first in the City of Watervliet, where he held proceedings in the open City Court courtroom, and then traveled north to the City of Cohoes where he held hearings in the open City Court.

One Friday morning, probably in 1964 or 1965, I arrived at the office of Seymour Fox, where I was then employed and was instructed by Mr. Fox to go to the Cohoes City Court to represent a young man, who I will call “Jim”.  Jim was a client of Mr. Fox, who was handling his injury claim.  At this time, any one of the age of 18 could buy and consume alcohol, but a male who had not reached his majority, then age 21, could not be married by a Town Justice of the Peace (as Town Justices were then known) without parental consent.  Jim was 20 years of age.

When I arrived at the Cohoes City Court, there were perhaps two dozen people in the room awaiting their turn before Judge Laffin.  Jim showed me a petition that had been served upon him whereby the Albany County Department of Social Services was seeking an order for him to pay support for his wife and her two children by a former marriage, who were welfare recipients.  Jim told me that he had had a brief affair with this divorced woman a couple of months previously.  Following an evening of drinking, they went to a local Town Justice of the Peace who performed a marriage ceremony, although they didn’t have a marriage license.  Based on these facts, I had two defenses: (a) the marriage was invalid because there was no marriage license, and (b) even if there had been a marriage license, there had been no consent by Jim’s parents.  Jim never lived with his “wife” and hadn’t even seen her again after they broke up shortly after the marriage ceremony.

Support cases are civil in nature.  Unlike a criminal charge to which an accused enters a plea of guilty or not guilty, a civil petition is responded to by admitting or denying each allegation, and when appropriate, setting forth any defenses. 

When Jim’s case was called, I went to the bench with Jim.  Judge Laffin read the petition and asked Jim “How do you plead, guilty, or not guilty?”  I was astounded!  Even though this was my first Family Court case, I knew that it was not proceeding properly.  I interjected that on Jim’s behalf, I wanted to admit certain allegations of the petition, deny others, and explain his defense.  Judge Laffin looked at me, and then turned to Jim and asked: “Guilty, or not guilty?”  Once again, I tried to explain that I wanted to respond to the allegations but was ignored.  The next time he was asked, Jim said “Not guilty.”  To my surprise, Judge Laffin said that he was being remanded to the Albany County Jail.  Jim was put in handcuffs and led away by a bailiff.

I was at a total loss and couldn’t believe what had happened.  I waited until Judge Laffin went through the entire calendar of cases and approached him.  With the audience gone, I tried to discuss the matter, but Judge Laffin told me to be at the Family Court in Albany at 2:00 pm that afternoon for a hearing.

Shortly after I arrived, Jim was led in, still handcuffed.  Judge Laffin then read the petition and a written response that I had hastily prepared.  He questioned Jim about his age and the circumstances of the marriage ceremony.  He then said the marriage was obviously invalid and Jim was not required to pay any support.  He dismissed the petition, ordered the bailiff to remove the handcuffs, and told Jim that he was free to go.

I never appeared before Judge Laffin again, but I understood that his successors followed proper procedures.  

No Worm, No Conviction

My father was an avid fisherman. For a time he flirted with fly fishing, but to say that he never mastered the art would be an understatement - he never caught a single trout on a fly. With the advent of spinning tackle, he tried his hand at fishing with lures, going so far as to buy a kit to make his own lures. He would mold a plastic dough into what he thought the trout would be attracted to, adding bits of feathers and hair from a deer’s tail that he unceremoniously chopped off a hunter’s buck for that purpose one November day. [He had not consulted with the hunter who had stopped at my father’s tavern for a few drinks to celebrate his hunter’s prowess, and to show off the buck that was tied across his front fender in the usual tradition.] My father’s success with spinning lures equaled his success with fly fishing, probably because my father’s idea of what a trout would consider edible was at variance with the trouts’ concept of food. He had had some luck using lures that he purchased in the sporting goods section of Montgomery Ward, but using bought lures proved too expensive for him, as the rocky bottom of the Kinderhook Creek ate more of the lures than did the trout. Although many of the trout fishermen had success with live bait, my father had no convenient source of shiners and never really considered that option.

Dad finally resigned himself to being a worm fisherman, and as such, he became a master. Earthworms were readily available and free for the digging. We maintained a good supply in a big wooden box that soda was delivered in during the 1950s and 1960s. The box was lined with screening to keep the worms from escaping, and they were fed cornmeal or stale bread. Sometimes I would take a flashlight and hunt for nightcrawlers to add to the worm population. In any event, Dad had a ready source of bait at his disposal, and during April and May, he would go fishing several times a week in the nearby Kinderhook Creek or its tributaries. He knew every “hole” in which trout would likely be feeding and rarely came home empty-handed. Some days, when the fishing was exceptional, he would bring home the legal limit of ten trout, eat breakfast, and go back for some more. On the weekends, when a lot of trout fishermen came into his tavern after fishing, he took a particular delight in listening to their tales and then bringing out a platter of trout that he had caught earlier that morning. His catch usually was larger than that of his customers. He especially enjoyed showing his catch to the fly fishermen. One year a large photograph of him fishing on the opening day of the trout season appeared on the front page of the Times-Union’s sports section, and that gave him some celebrity status among the fishermen.

Before the April 1 opening of trout season, Dad would go to North Chatham and “blindsnatch” for lake suckers that would swim from Kinderhook Lake upstream to spawn in the Valatiekill Creek once the ice melted. Lake suckers, unlike creek suckers, were large fish, and the females were heavy with roe. Blindsnatching suckers was not considered sporting by most of the trout fishermen, and suckers were thought to be an inferior fish. Nevertheless, there were several devotees of the sport who blindsnatched the suckers during the few days when the run was on. Dad would usually be notified when the run started by Art Pulver, our newspaper delivery man who lived in North Chatham. Sometimes the notification would come in the form of a dead sucker delivered with our Times-Union.

Blindsnatching suckers required a totally different technique than fishing for trout. Instead of a thin fiberglass rod with a reel and light monofil line to which a small hook would be attached, Dad made his own heavy-duty tackle. This consisted of a maple sapling about five feet long to which he would tie a length of heavy cord. The business end of this fishing line was a large treble hook. A treble hook consists of three large hooks joined together along their shaft. A weight was attached to the hook to make it sink to the bottom of the creek where the suckers were. Spawning suckers did not eat during the run, so no bait was used. Instead, the treble hook would be cast upstream and then dragged downstream along the bottom of the creek where it might hook into a sucker swimming in the opposite direction. There was no catch limit, and during the height of the run, it was not unusual for Dad to fill up one or two large burlap grain sacks with lake suckers. The run frequently coincided with Passover, and my father would distribute most of the catch among other Jewish families who used them to cook gefilte fish. Also, my mother would parboil and then fry the roe, which she dipped in egg batter.


One reason for my father’s success in blindsnatching suckers was his treble hooks. Although treble hooks were locally available, and in general use, my father bought larger, stainless steel treble hooks at a Sears Roebuck store in Miami. I don’t know what treble hooks were used for in Florida, but they were obviously for larger fish, and the stainless steel necessary for use in saltwater was much stronger than the freshwater variety locally available. He would sometimes give one to Mr. Pulver and other select fishermen.

The real prize when blindsnatching lake suckers was a walleyed pike. Although hooking suckers by snatching was legal because suckers were not a game fish, it was illegal to take game fish by snatching. The pike ran with the suckers because they feasted on the sucker roe, although they were not as numerous. In fact, the legal season for catching pike did not start until May or June, well after the sucker run had ended. The pike, when caught from the cold March or early April waters, were delicious. They were larger and more flavorful than trout.

During the sucker run, state game wardens would set up roadblocks near the Valatiekill, stopping automobiles driven by men who were obviously fishermen, and inspecting their catch. There was a substantial fine for possessing a walleyed pike out of season. If a fisherman hooked a pike while blindsnatching, he was obligated to immediately toss it back into the creek. Blindsnatching eventually became illegal sometime in the 1950s, and the new regulations required that the fisherman actually see the fish he was trying to hook. In theory, this would enable the fisherman to differentiate between suckers and pike, but in practice, it was impossible to see anything in the turbulent spring waters, and the sport ended.

My father both loved to eat out-of-season walleyed pike and to outwit the game wardens. He knew that his car was always a candidate for a search, but he figured out how to smuggle the pike past the game wardens. Our family car for several years was a green 1947 Buick Roadmaster, a large sedan. If he hooked a walleyed pike and there was no game warden or other fisherman close by, my father would bring it to the Buick and wrap it in an old towel or other cloth. He would then lift the Buick’s hood and reach into a hollow panel in the front door, where he would stash the fish. The game wardens would search the trunk and engine compartments of the car, and sometimes even look under the car and under the seats, but they never thought to check the door panels. Dad took delight in telling that Warden Thorne told him that he knew that Dad was taking home pike, but didn’t know how he was doing it. Although Dad bragged to other fishermen how good the pike tasted, he did not reveal his transport method to even close fishing friends, and it remained a family secret. About the time blindsnatching was ruled out, Dad traded in the Buick.

Dad also once tried (illegal) night spearfishing for bass from a rowboat with a spotlight at a local lake with a shady neighbor, Theodore “Teets” LaRose, but he came back empty-handed and didn’t try it again. He also went ice fishing on Tsatsawassa Lake a couple of times, but also didn’t catch anything. I tried ice fishing once when I was in law school. My wife, Nedda, and I drove our VW way out on the ice of the Great Sacandaga Reservoir, accompanied by a classmate, Don Butler, and his wife, in their VW. We had to cut holes through 14 inches of ice when the wind was blowing and it was less than ten degrees. We sat in our cars, watching the tip-ups that I had rescued from my father’s basement, waiting for the “four o’clock run”. It never came, and we left without a single bite, never to go ice fishing again. I sold the tip-ups years later at a garage sale.

One summer day in the early 1970s my father called to advise me that he had volunteered my services to defend “Charley” on a violation of fishing without a license. It seems that Charley had a small house in East Nassau. His property bordered the Kinderhook Creek in an area frequently fished by my father, and they sometimes fished together. Charley had been fishing in his back yard when a game warden approached and asked to see his license. When he was unable to produce one, he was given a citation to appear in the Nassau town court, before Judge Lamb. Although a first time offender for the violation would usually only receive a nominal fine, my father was aware that there was some exemption from the licensing laws for property owners fishing on their own land, although he did not know the details of the exemption. In any event, he promised Charley that I would be in the Nassau Town Court on the morning that the citation was returnable.

How do you get out of a commitment that your father made for you?

I showed up at Judge Lamb’s house at the appointed hour. Town judges frequently held court right in their own homes then, a practice no longer followed. Judge Lamb and the game warden were very surprised to see me since it was highly unusual for someone to be represented by counsel for such a minor charge, and even more so for a defendant of very modest means. Although I knew that the licensing exemption was quite well spelled out to exempt agricultural landowners, I elicited testimony from Charley that he had a little garden and was growing tomatoes and some squash. Judge Lamb was not too impressed with Charley’s agricultural pursuits, so I made the legal issue the question as to whether Charley was actually fishing. The game warden confidently testified that when he approached Charley, he was holding a fishing rod with the line in the waters of the Kinderhook Creek. He admitted that Charley hadn’t caught any fish, but pointed out that the violation was the act of fishing, and did not require catching fish. The testimony turned to the issue of what constituted fishing. Does fishing require a hook and bait? The game warden said that there was, in fact, a hook on Charley’s line, with a nightcrawler on the hook. I asked him to produce the worm. He said he threw it away at the time he issued the citation.

I jumped on that answer and indignantly requested that Judge Lamb hold the game warden in contempt for destroying material evidence, which could have, and should have been preserved for trial. Of course, there was no basis for a contempt charge, but Judge Lamb, somewhat of a fisherman himself, seized the opportunity to dismiss the charge because of a lack of evidence. The game warden, who probably had never before lost a fishing without a license case, was furious, particularly when I told Charley that my fee would be some fresh trout.

My father agreed not to again volunteer my services.