African Americans represent about three percent of the members of the CT Bar. African American females represent less than that. In the early 2000’s Megalie Semexant Coffy graduated law school and got a job with the Judicial Branch as a Temporary Assistant Clerk in Bridgeport. I graduated from law school about the same time. At the time a job as a temporary assistant clerk was considered one of the lowest paying jobs in the CT legal world. Megalie worked her way up to housing mediator, which is not a difficult job. Its boring but not difficult. Over the years Megalie’s salary went up from minimum wage to six figures.

Its not clear if Megalie ever applied for admission as an attorney in CT but she passed the Bar exam in 2012. She was involved in a criminal case in which she claimed to be a victim of a stalker, but the alleged perpetrator got acquitted, and she had retracted her allegations at the criminal trial. This may have been the reason she couldn’t get admitted to the CT Bar, as she would have failed the “moral fitness” standard, which is still stuck in a 1950 time warp in the State of CT, although Criminal Justice Commission member, and former carjacker Reginald Betts. was admitted to the CT Bar despite his prior criminal record. Betts graduated from Yale Law School and had the full force of the Yale legal community rallying to support him. What other profession requires a “moral fitness test” for admission, other than the clergy? The moral fitness standard for attorneys has been ridiculed by legal scholars for years, yet it continues to be alive and well in the Miss Manners Victorian State of Connecticut.

Megalie’s supervisor was a woman named Roberta Palmer, who probably also started out as a law clerk and worked her way up the judicial ladder into an administrative position. Not a difficult job. Its like working at the DMV, except in the Judiciary Ms. Palmer now earns close to $200K a year, almost as much as a judge, with full benefits and retirement for life. The only word I can use to describe this salary for this job is the following: OBSCENE!

Ms. Palmer hauled Megalie into her office, along with other judicial “management” employees and told Megalie that she was taking too many days off related to an injury. Megalie’s union got involved. Megalie accused Ms. Palmer of also taking off a lot of personal time. Within 3 months Megalie was terminated, after having worked for the Judiciary for over ten years with no problems.

It took Megalie two years to get her job reinstated by a labor arbitration arbitrator, ie., Harvey M. Shrage, who found that the Judiciary violated Megalie’s rights by terminating her. Yet Shrage found that Megalie should have been suspended without pay for her absences rather than discharged. Megalie lost two years of pay waiting for the arbitration decision, a harsh result. Shrage’s decision discussed the computerized “Judicial Employee Time Tracking System” and how it was frequently altered by supervisors and employees and prone to glitches and mistakes. The dysfunctional Judiciary.

After she got her job reinstated, Megalie filed a lawsuit against the Judiciary for retaliating against her for exercising her First Amendment right to complain about her supervisor who also took liberties with taking personal days off. Judge Kenneth Povodator shot down her First Amendment lawsuit. He stated in his decision in effect, that the fact that “everyone” takes time off from the Judiciary is no excuse for Megalie to “break the law.” Povodator found that Megalie, who was fired 90 days after accusing her supervisor of taking too many days off, did not show a connection between her accusation and her termination even though she worked without incident in the Judiciary for twenty years. Please! The Megalie case is currently on appeal.

Megalie is a member of the one percent, more or less, of Black female juris doctors in the State of Connecticut, from the best I can determine from available information. The CT Bar does not keep such statistics, or conduct studies to determine whether the Bar discriminates against minorities, unlike the California State Bar which has conducted many studies which have determined that discrimination does exist and has taken steps to reduce Judicial discrimination.

Megalie Semexant Coffy is the Rosa Parks of CT. She refused to sit in the back of the bus and remain silent while her $200K a year supervisor liberally took off personal days. Megalie joins TaShun Bowden-Lewis, a member of the CT Bar who was terminated by the Judiciary, without due process as far as I can tell, in retaliation for making allegations of racism in her job as Chief of the Public Defender’s Office. TaShun’s case is also on appeal, as is the case of attorney Josephine Miller, who was disbarred by Judge Barbara Bellis, apparently in retaliation for Ms. Miller’s claims of racism on the part of the Judiciary. The CHRO made a finding of probable cause that Committee member Gary Friedle discriminated against Miller, but the Judicial Branch threw out the CHRO case and said the CHRO has no right to meddle in Judicial affairs, as the CHRO is part of the Executive Branch of government. Ms. Miller’s case is also on appeal. Ms. Miller was readmitted to the Federal Bar despite the fact that she was disbarred by Judge Bellis. Judge Bellis apparently has been sidelined by the Judiciary and no longer handles grievance complaints. The new Judge in charge is Tom Welch.

There is a Black male member of the Bar who has been repeatedly denied readmission to the Bar, a guy named Corey Brinson, who got his LLM in law after he got released from Federal prison. I have been blogging about Brinson, Miller and others and sending my blogs to members of the Judiciary and Legislature for months. Brinson was just unanimously recommended for readmission by the three member Standing Committee. His case now must be approved by a three Judge panel.

And of course there is the case of suspended CT Bar member Larry Noodles, who has been suspended for over ten years due to the content of this very blog that you are reading right now. The Noodles case is also on appeal. Noodles was not born Black or female, but he currently identifies as a Black female, and is in the process of legally changing his name to Rosa Parks Noodles.

Lets talk about the white guy lawyers who got in trouble but were quickly welcomed back into the Club by the gatekeepers in the Judiciary. Guy McDonough was busted for DUI no less than three times and was readmitted no problem, in like Flynn, as long as he agreed to attend AA meetings! Attorney Louis Rubano, while working as an attorney at Lynch, Traub, Keefe & Errante, defrauded the State of Connecticut and Medicaid (DAS) of some $263,000 over a twenty year period. Rubano was suspended by Judge Brian Fischer for only nine months and returned to practice automatically and was never referred for criminal prosecution. The Lynch Traub firm’s malpractice insurance paid off the State of Connecticut. No restitution payments for Mr. Rubano. In my opinion if Rubano was referred for criminal prosecution his defense would most likely have been that the partners at Lynch Traub knew all about his scam.

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 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. 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, who also wrote letters for Rubano, 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.

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