Question for one of our legal beagles

[ex-khobar Andy]

I'm an occasional editor of Wikipedia: it's mostly reactive rather than proactive when I come across something which is either wrong or needs clarification.

I was looking up Dian Fossey (the gorilla lady - one of her counterparts was/is Jane Goodall as in chimpanzees) when I found this, with my bolding to indicate the passage I think needs elaboration:

A will purporting to be Fossey's bequeathed all of her estate (including the proceeds from the film Gorillas in the Mist) to the Digit Fund to underwrite anti-poaching patrols. Fossey did not mention her family in the will, which was unsigned. Her mother, Hazel Fossey Price, successfully challenged the will.[7] Supreme Court Justice Swartwood threw out the will and awarded the estate to her mother, including about $4.9 million in royalties from a recent book and upcoming movie, stating that the document "was simply a draft of her purported will and not a will at all." Price said she was working on a project to preserve the work her daughter had done for the mountain gorillas in Rwanda

Now I had never heard of Supreme Court Justice Swartwood so I followed up the reference.

Filed from Ithaca NY, it's an AP story which says: (again, my bolding)

″We are not satisfied that Dr. Fossey intended the purported will to be her last will and testament,″ state Supreme Court Judge Charles B. Swartwood wrote in his 19-page decision. ″Our belief is to the contrary. This document was simply a draft of her purported will and not a will at all.″

So Swartwood is a 'state' (sic) Supreme Court Judge. OK: which state? I was living then in NY and the name rang no bells.

Google gets me to:

Charles B Swartwood III
Mediator and Arbitrator, JAMS, Boston, MA, 2006-present
Chief Magistrate Judge, United States District Court, District of Massachusetts, 2005-January 2006; Magistrate Judge, 1993-2005
Commissioner/Hearing Officer for Judicial Misconduct, Supreme Judicial Court, 1983, 1989, and 1991; Member, Board of Bar Overseers, 1981-1985; Vice Chair, 1984-1985
Special Justice, Central District Court of Worcester, MA, 1973-1976
Moderator, Town of Southborough, MA, 1970-1973; 1977-1980
Selectman, Town of Southborough, MA, 1967-1970 (Chair, 1969-1970)
Private Practice, Mountain, Dearborn & Whiting, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1964-1993
LL.B., Boston University School of Law, 1964
A.B., Brown University, 1961

If I have the right Swartwood (and he's a III, so maybe not), I don't think that either 'Supreme Court Justice' (Wikipedia) or 'state Supreme Court Judge" (AP story) is correct. Bearing in mind that the AP story was filed in January 1988 I can't figure out what his role was in 1988 apart from private practice in Worcester MA.

Any ideas?

[BoSoxGal]

One of the ladies with Westlaw or Lexis access can probably pull up the decision for you.

Sadly, I found this in an extensive (and usually well researched) Vanity Fair piece on Fossey here:

Dian was an only child. Her parents divorced when she was little, and when she was six her mother, Hazel, married a builder named Richard Price. There doesn’t seem to have been much love between Dian and her stepfather. Until she was ten, she dined in the kitchen with the housekeeper (the Prices lived in San Francisco and were pretty well-off), while her parents ate together in the dining room. As an adult, Dian was estranged from the Prices.

Not sure that justice was actually done in the case.

eta: I’m not sure you’ve located the right judge, as Fossey resided in Africa and her parents in California - so I’m not sure the jurisdictional tie to Massachusetts? Unless the Digit Fund was located there - I haven’t read the VF piece in full yet.

eta: Looks like the Digit Fund, now called the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, is headquartered in Atlanta - so that furthers my suspicions about the judge.

[Long Run]

New York, confusingly, refers to its lower courts (i.e., trial court) as the "Supreme Court". The Court of Appeals is the state's highest court.

[Crackpot]

I know some things jurisdiction is decided by last place of residence if that helps

(Perhaps last place of US residence was Mass)

[BoSoxGal]

From my skimming of the VF piece, it appears that Dian Fossey’s last American residence was as a visiting associate professor at Cornell for 3 years in the early 80s, so it makes sense that you could be looking for a trial (Supreme) court judge in New York.

Maybe this guy?: https://paw.princeton.edu/memorial/char ... E2%80%9939 (Appears to be father of the Massachusetts judge you found on Google, who being younger would show up first in the algorithm results.)

And they are called justices in the N.Y. Supreme Court. So I guess the content is likely correct, but you’d be able to verify it for sure - and add a reference link - if you can find the case opinion online. They might have digitized the state court opinions back that far, you could check the N.Y. state court system online.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Thanks BSG - I think you've found the right chap. I tried looking for a Jr with Google but couldn't find him.

So I should just refer to him as (NY) State Supreme Court Justice (or Judge??) Charles B. Swartwood Jr. I'll add a link to the piece you found which basically expands on the other link.

[Burning Petard]

I just love professional jargon. Lawyers even have a term for their favorite weird vocabulary--term of art.

Where else would you find something called "supreme" meaning least authoritative? That can only be matched by the automotive practice about four decades ago that used 'deluxe' or 'custom' for the stripped down, cheapest model.

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

But the New York State Supreme Court isn’t the least authoritative court - there are lots of little lesser courts beneath it.

Here’s a neat little history of the N.Y. courts for anybody interested: http://www.nycourts.gov/history/legal-h ... Courts.pdf

The civil/criminal trial courts in NY are different from most other states in that it’s all one big unified [Supreme] Court with a division in every N.Y. county, whereas in most (all?) other states district courts are separate entities from one another with different local rules and such. So perhaps this better explains the naming of the court as a Supreme Court because it’s this big unified beast that handles all citizens across the state in the same fashion?

And it does make logical sense that the court which has the final say on judicial matters, the great majority being appellate matters, is called the Court of Appeals.

Plus those New Yawkers just gotta be different!

[Sue U]

New York's state trial courts are Supreme Courts because they have the broadest jurisdiction and may rule on virtually any matter. The trial court judges are indeed called Justices. The NY Supreme Court is divided by county, so you'd have the Supreme Court of New York, County of New York; Supreme Court of New York, County of Richmond, etc. The state courts are further organized geographically into four Appellate Division Departments, so that cases appealed out of Manhattan and the Bronx go to the First Department; Long Island, Staten Island and metro-area counties go to the Second Department, and "upstate" is divided between the Third and Fourth Departments.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Thanks all: I just clarified the item to 'New York State Supreme Court Justice Swartwood'.