Background: Lackawanna City Courthouse, Erie County, New York (Google Maps); Inset: Former Lackawanna City Judge Louis Violanti (WIVB).
A judge in a city near Buffalo, New York, has resigned for a second time due to accusations from ten years ago. The allegations claim that he conducted fake court proceedings and unlawfully dismissed a traffic ticket for a friend.
The former judge now promises he will “never return” to the bench.
Louis P. Violanti, an Associate Judge at the Lackawanna City Court in Erie County, New York, stepped down on January 23. This action followed a complaint filed by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct in August, related to events during Violanti’s prior term as a judge in 2013. Violanti had been appointed to serve a six-year term as a judge in March 2024.
The allegations state that during a church event on Christmas Eve in 2012, Violanti’s friend Daniel E. Endress mentioned he had a ticket for driving with suspended vehicle registration and that he would be appearing in court soon. Allegedly, Violanti assured Endress not to worry, saying, “I’ll handle it.”
Next, Violanti is said to have asked police officer John Hruby, who was assigned as security in his courtroom, to role-play as Endress. On Jan. 11, 2013, Hruby appeared in court and played the part of the ticket recipient, attributing the ticket to a mistake by the vehicle’s insurer and playing up his role as a family-minded dockworker.
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A court transcript shows Hruby posing as Endress, making the following statements in court to the then-judge:
I have three children at home. I have to work two jobs to make ends meet, and Mr. Obama’s taking two more percent of my money. I work the docks in the morning; it’s hard for me to get here, so I was wondering if we could get this taken care of. We’ve got a lot of ships coming in from Cleveland.
“Following the sham proceeding, and on the basis of fictitious evidence,” Violanti then dismissed the staged case, according to the Commission’s findings. Violanti noted on the record at the time that his decision was “in anticipation of what the district attorney’s office would do in this situation,” despite the fact that no prosecutor was present in court at the time.
According to the Commission’s findings, Violanti resigned as city judge the following March after he learned that the Appellate Division was investigating the incident and before the investigation was concluded. The judge’s resignation ended the Commission’s official action at the time. After his resignation, the Appellate Division suspended Violanti from practicing law for two years in February 2014.
Despite the fact that Violanti’s actions constituted “serious misconduct” according to the Appellate Division, his law license was reinstated in March 2016, and he was reappointed to the bench by the Lackawanna Mayor Annette Iafallo in March 2024 for a six-year term. At the time, Iafallo said she believed Violanti to be “both highly qualified and deserving of a second chance.”
According to the commission, when Violanti resigned in 2013, “it was without a pledge never to return, and before the Commission could remove him from office, which under the State Constitution would have barred him from returning to the bench.”
The commission’s statement explained how Violanti was able to regain his position as judge after stepping down in 2013.
“After a judge resigns, the Commission has only 120 days to complete its proceedings and issue a decision to remove the judge from office,” the news release says. “That could not be accomplished here without abridging the judge’s due process rights while the attorney grievance process was also underway.”
Upon Violanti’s permanent removal, Commission Administrator Robert H. Tembeckjian said in a statement:
It is outrageous that a judge would orchestrate a court proceeding and produce a transcript with a stand-in pretending to be the defendant, and no prosecutor present, so that a traffic ticket could be fixed. Had the Commission not been constrained by time limits in the law, the judge would have been removed in 2013 and constitutionally ineligible to return. Instead, a decade later he came back, only to face discipline and agree to the inevitable: permanent departure from the bench.
You can read the full news release here.
