From the NY Daily News’ Dave Goldiner.
.A frustrated songwriter who doubles as a Staten Island judge has issued a bizarre ruling in a case involving George Harrison’s controversial cancer doctor – writing his decision in a parody of the late Beatle’s classic “Something.”
When Dr. Gil Lederman asked Supreme Court Justice Robert Gigante for a change of venue over negative publicity, the judge agreed – in song.
“Something in the folks he treats,” Gigante wrote. “Attracts bad press like no other doctor.”
In moving the case to Albany, he mused, “If this case I were to keep, defendant would gently weep.”
Lederman has drawn rebukes for publicly discussing Harrison’s case after the famed musician died in 2001. He also got into a legal tangle with Olivia Harrison over a guitar her husband autographed on his deathbed.
The doctor’s latest problems center on a wrongful death suit filed by the family of a colon cancer patient who was lured to Staten Island by Lederman’s much-publicized claims of revolutionary cancer treatments.
A lawyer for the family of cancer victim Suzanne Mikul called the judge’s song-parody ruling outrageous. “I think it’s an insulting decision,” attorney Steven North said. “It’s very offensive.”
North contends that Lederman and his colleagues at Staten Island University Hospital gave the 66-year-old New Mexico woman too much radiation in December 2001, causing her death two months later.
Aside from the sour notes struck by the judge, North disagreed with the substance of the decision – that negative news coverage of Lederman poisoned the jury pool in the city.
He said plenty of New Yorkers never heard about the Harrison guitar case, and could be open-minded about the case even if they had. “I think they know George Harrison in Albany, too,” North said