Louis Rubano, while working as an attorney at Lynch, Traub, Keefe & Errante, for over a six year period created two sets of settlement statements in hundreds of his personal injury lawsuits which resulted in the State of Connecticut and Medicaid (DAS) defrauded of some $263,000. The State of Connecticut argued there were additional loss amounts that were unaccounted for and that Attorney Rubano may have engaged in fraudulent practices for over 20 years. OCDC v. Louis Rubano, NNH-CV19-6093890-S.  Rubano was suspended by Judge Brian Fischer for only nine months and returned to practice automatically at the conclusion of those nine months without having to file a readmission application and subject himself to long and costly proceedings before the Standing Committee. Retired Judge Antonio Robaina wrote a letter in support of Mr. Rubano and stated that Mr. Rubano did not “benefit personally” from his “theft,” yet Mr. Rubano’s theft most likely conferred upon him a competitive advantage, enabling him to generate new personal injury clients in a field where attorneys commonly market themselves based on the monetary recoveries they secure for clients.  Indeed Mr. Rubano advertises personal injury cases heavily in the African-American New Haven community and recently was hired on the legal team that settled the Randy Cox case for $45 million. 

A total of three retired Judges wrote letters in support of Rubano, and asking Judge Fischer to forgive him for his crime. Judge Robaina retired in 2018 in which he was making about $180K a year. Robaina currently collects $140K a year in State pension, plus his salary at the big law firm where he works. Judge Michael E. Riley and Judge Angela Robinson retired about the same time making $180K a year in salary and have each collected about $140K a year State pension since retirement, in addition to their salaries at the big law firms where they work. Talk about cashing in at the expense of the Connecticut taxpayers. “Greed is good” in the words of Gordo Gekko. Other Judges who used the revolving door of the CT Judiciary to make even more money in private practice: Joette Katz earns $153K in CT pension, Richard Robinson earns $170K in CT pension; Chase Rogers, with close ties to Gov. Lamont, earns $164K in State pension; Lynda Munro earns $147K in State pension, while she currently gets lucrative family court appointments by her buddies in the CT Judiciary as well as her job at Pullman & Comley. Munro appeared as a spectator at the trial of Paul Boyne, who was recently convicted of threatening Judges on his blog. 70 year old retired Naval officer Boyne, who was extradited from Virginia, is doing 20 years without having fired a shot. Mr. Boyne posted on his blog the following quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” During Boyne’s criminal trial Boyne’s attorney public defender Todd Bussert cross examined one of the police officers as to whether Thomas Jefferson was ever arrested and charged with making threats. State’s Attorney Jack Doyle objected to the line of questioning. Objection SUSTAINED. Paul’s blog was an extreme version of former FBI Director James Comey’s sea shell formation which got Comey indicted. Paul Boyne did not help his case when he kept referring to his sentencing Judge Peter Brown as “Brown-boy” in his blog postings. A Judge is supposed to be impartial and not be swayed by his own personal feelings about a case. Its not clear if Judge Brown, an African-American Judge was punishing Boyne with an over the top 20 year sentence, especially where Judge Brown sentenced rapists to far less jail time over the last few years. Plus Judge Brown was also somewhat of a “victim” of Boyne’s blog, which raises the question of whether Brown should have recused himself.

I practiced law for 20 years in the family court, civil court and criminal courts in Federal and State in CT and even NY and NC at one point, and was hired by the State of CT for years to represent indigent clients. After I was sentenced the CT Bar allowed me to continue to practice law up to the day I turned myself in to Federal prison. I appeared before Judge Munro on a family case in which she presided. In front of the entire courtroom she called my case while I was walking down the outside hallway. While I was in the hallway she announced in front of an entire room of attorneys and litigants that I must have been rounded up by the Feds and whether anyone knew of my whereabouts. My client came out of the courtroom and told me that she was surprised to see me, she thought I was locked up. Judge Munro then cleared the courtroom and went into her office. When I walked in to the empty courtroom her clerk summoned me and told me that Judge Munro wanted to speak with me privately in her office. I walked into her office and sat down on a chair in front of her. She was behind her desk. She looked at me with contempt and told me to stand. She sat at her desk and started calling the judicial disciplinary authorities and told me there was no way I was going to appear before her in Court. I shrugged my shoulders. She couldn’t get through to anyone in spite of her pushing her weight around as a Superior Court Judge demanding that the secretaries who answered the phone locate the authorities immediately. She berated me and told me I was not allowed in her courthouse and she would reschedule my case until someone else appeared on behalf of my client. I said no problem.

After I got out of prison I told my attorney who represented me before the Bar, Mark DuBois, a decent, honest attorney who is an expert in legal ethics, about my experience with Judge Munro, who has been honored for years by the CT Bar and to this day gets very lucrative referrals from the CT Judiciary to work on cases as an “independent” attorney. Mark told me that he knew all about my experience with Munro and he said he had a pretrial conference with Munro and a couple of other attorneys after I went away to prison in which Munro told them the story about me and laughed about how she subjected me to humiliation. The problem in CT, and other States, is that too many people with anger management issues, narcissism and other personality disorders get appointed to the Bench and preside over cases involving human lives. These people may be better off in a cubicle counting beans with little to no interaction with fellow human beings. Once these people are on the Bench they use their power and personality disorders to their advantage to bully others into worshiping them. It then becomes impossible to have them removed from the Bench.

Mark Dubois used to be in charge of the disciplinary apparatus as did attorney Pat King, who went on to work as corporation counsel for the City of New Haven. They both told me, or through my attorney, that they were disgusted with the way the authorities have become overly punitive and political pawns of their Judicial masters. Its hard to sympathize with attorneys who get disciplined for unethical behavior, as most people hate lawyers, but when attorney discipline is meted out based on whether your name is Louis Rubano, you have to wonder whether this is the tip of the “Judicial iceberg” of a broader system of abuse of power in the “Constitution State.” I can’t count the number of attorneys and Judges who have ruled on my reinstatement case and denied my application while ignoring the First Amendment. My case did not present complicated First Amendment issues by any means of the imagination, yet I was repeatedly denied, as well as subjected to public scorn and ridicule, by numerous individuals with law degrees.

New Haven Judge Brian Fischer never referred Mr. Rubano’s crime to the State’s Attorneys office, as was done with bankruptcy lawyer Peter Ressler, who got sentenced to 63 months at Otisville prison camp during COVID, where I was incarcerated. He got out early due to COVID. Peter’s thievery was reported by the Bankruptcy Judge to the Department of Justice. No such reporting was done by Judge Brian Fischer. I heard that one of the partners at Lynch, Traub, Keefe and Errante (LTKE), a former prosecutor, wanted Lou Rubano to get arrested for his crime, yet the members of the CT Bar appeared to have other plans for Lou. A law student intern who worked for Lou while he worked for LTKE reported to me that Lou used to boast that he had the Judges eating out of his hands at the New Haven courthouse. Is it possible that Lou had dirt on the Judges, and this was the reason that Lou avoided getting arrested and avoided any problem with his law license getting suspended for more than a year, which would subject him to a long and costly readmission process, which I have been subjected to, and I never stole a quarter million dollars. I did 7 closings in which I made nothing other than attorneys fees, and Attorney Willie Dow stated that I wasn’t much more than a “scrivener.”

Recently criminal defense attorney and former Navy SEAL Richard Silverstein, a rather outspoken New Haven criminal defense attorney who has tried criminal cases on an almost regular basis for almost half a century got in trouble with New Haven Judge Brian Fischer over a $250.00 bounced IOLTA check. Silverstein had initially reached an agreement with the authorities that he would get a reprimand over the $250.00 bounced IOLTA check, yet Judge Fischer ended up suspending Silverstein for one year on the basis that his disciplinary history was “abhorrent” and cited grievances involving retainer agreements and public defender billing records going back a quarter century. OCDC v. Silverstein CV23-6134443-S.  Some of the old grievances were related to Mr. Silverstein’s prior substance abuse addictions which he recovered from decades ago.  The amount of grievances lodged against Mr. Silverstein, in his nearly 40 years of practice, was rather small considering Mr. Silverstein managed a heavy volume of clients where he was constantly on trial for decades, which the disciplinary Judge was well aware, in a field fraught with land mines, where criminal clients frequently grieve their attorneys. Silverstein is pushing 70 years old. His one year suspension is effectively a de facto permanent disbarment. Why did Judge Fischer issue Rubano a slap on the wrist and not refer his criminal conduct to the State’s Attorney’s Office, while giving Richard Silverstein the death sentence?

Rubano recently got in trouble with the CT Bar for representing a victim of a car accident as well as the moving company that caused the accident at the same time, a clear violation of the conflict of interest rules. Lou’s office sent a letter of representation on behalf of a client who was suffering life threatening injuries to the insurance company of Lou’s client’s moving company that caused the accident. When Lou’s office realized that they represented clients with adverse interests Lou kept the client with the near death injuries and dumped the client whose moving company had paid him a $2,000.00 retainer. Lou only got a reprimand, and was required to take 6 Continuing Legal Education Classes, which he appealed and lost. Lou got another slap on the wrist with the CT Bar.

I had reported about Lou’s crime some years ago in my blog, only to be subjected to disdain and contempt by Committee member attorney Cindy Robinson, because my blog used the words “blond bimbo” to describe a picture of a blond woman that I found posted on the Internet drinking wine with Lou Rubano. Cindy interrogated me and said to the effect, “Do you know whether this blond bimbo is somebody’s daughter, somebody’s mother, somebody’s aunt… how dare you refer to this woman as a blond bimbo… on behalf of all blond bimbos in the world I hereby excommunicate you from the CT Bar for eternity.” I objected. The Connecticut Practice Book does not allow Cindy Robinson to suspend my law license for future lives after I am reincarnated.

 

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