U.S. District Court Judge Harold Baer Jr., whose liberal rulings on civil liberties generated a firestorm of criticism and who more recently presided over a municipal bond bid-rigging trial, died Tuesday in Stony Brook, N.Y., at age 81.
According to the New York Times, who quoted his daughter, Elizabeth, Baer died from complications of a fall on May 24 at his home in Fire Island Pines.
"Certainly, Judge Baer will be most remembered, for better or worse, for his decidedly liberal rulings. [But] no matter his politics, Judge Baer brought the professionalism to both sides of the bench," said Anthony Sabino, a white-collar criminal defense attorney in Mineola, N.Y., and a St. John's University law professor.
"In recent years he devoted tremendous effort to reducing the court's caseload via the process of court-annexed mediation, a highly successful program that will endure for years to come, due to his dedication," Sabino said.
In 2012, at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, Baer presided over U.S. v. Steven Goldberg, Dominick Carollo and Peter Grimm, whom the Justice Department's antitrust unit accused of rigging municipal bond contracts and receiving kickbacks. A jury convicted the former General Electric bankers on all nine counts, but they won an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in December, citing expired statute of limitations.
Three weeks ago, Baer sentenced former CDR Financial Products Inc. employees Douglas Goldberg and Daniel Naeh, giving neither any prison time or probation. Both pleaded guilty in 2010 to multiple criminal charges for participating in wide-reaching bid rigging schemes in the municipal market.
Baer fined Naeh $100,000, but ordered no fine for Goldberg, citing his low net income level.
The Justice Department said the crimes cost municipal issuers and the Internal Revenue Service millions. Bank of America, General Electric Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and UBS AG have paid upwards of $743 million in restitution and fines.
During the three-week U.S. v. Carollo trial at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in lower Manhattan, Baer, who walked with a cane at the time, displayed a sarcastic but good-natured sense of humor.
Baer quipped about the Japanese rice wine sake when Adrian Scott-Jones, who admitted to a drinking problem, took the stand said he recalled one meeting because of the "exceptionally fine sake" the restaurant had served. After some back-and-forth between Scott-Jones and defense counsel about Italian and Japanese restaurants, Baer said: "I think the jury can differentiate between lasagna and sake."
Baer was also sympathetic to a jury of 12 citizens who may have struggled with the nuances of the municipal bond industry. He also understood their everyday concerns. He pushed for an earlier starting time for daily proceedings but backed off when several of them said it would conflict with sending their children to school.
Baer was a founder of the namesake firm of Baer, Marks & Upham, a respected midsized New York law firm. Back then, said Sabino, "midsized firms dominated the legal landscape in New York, and law was far more a profession and a business."
In January 1996, Baer ruled that $4 million worth of cocaine and heroin found in a car trunk could not be used as evidence against the driver, even though she admitted to being a drug runner. Baer said the location of the arrest, Manhattan's drug-heavy Washington Heights neighborhood, was inundated with rogue cops and the driver's escape from the scene was therefore not suspicious.
