Curtis J. Berger

Jack Weinstein: The fertile septuagenarian

I remember our very first meeting. The date: February 12, 1962. The occasion: my one-day look over by the faculty of Columbia Law School. The day began in Jacks office. It was not yet nine oclock, but Jack had been at work for hours, as he would be most mornings. We became colleagues four months later. We also became friends. Our joint tenure at Columbia would soon end as Jack gave up full-time teaching to become Nassau County Attorney, and, in 1967, a federal judge. Our friendship, happily, has endured. Greatness in a judge (and few would disagree that Jack is a great one) is the sum of many qualities: firm grasp of the law; ability to command respect; boundless energy, coupled with a work ethic; passion for excellence; intelligence; verbal acumen; and, realism. These describe Jack, but not completely. What must be added to the portrait are his consummate wish that our legal system be truly humane, fair, and workable, his ceaseless endeavor to make it so, and above all, his readiness to use the law and his office creatively. I saw this creative spark first in the mid-1960s, shortly after Jack became Nassau County Attorney. Jack asked me and PatrickJ. Rohan of the St. Johns Law School faculty to study the condemnation practices of his office, then handling nearly 500 acquisitions yearly. Behind this request was Jacks belief that the Countys procedures often failed to treat landowners fairly, especially where modest sums were involved and negotiation rather than trial fixed the payment. He wanted us to test his hypothesis by reviewing the nearly 2500 files that his office had opened over a five-year period before his arrival, comparing appraised values with settlement amounts or trial awards, and-where we found systemic discrepancies, especially those disfavoring landowners-considering how the system might work more fairly. The facts were far worse than he or we had expected. Quite simply, where settlement occurred other than by court-approved stipulation, the County usually paid the landowner less (often, far less) than the Countys lowest appraisal. We found a number of practices, some that the new County Attorney had already begun to change, which sharply skewed settlement negotiations against the landowner. Other reforms followed, all intended to make the process more fair to the condemnee rather than less costly to the condemner. Jacks effort to reform local condemnation practice was pioneering.