NOTE: This summary write-up is based on Frank Report Coverage of Family Court Debtor’s Prisons.
Jail Time for Legal Fees: Mom Locked Up in Family Court Scandal!
Judge Erika Tindill Orders Contempt Over Legal Fees in Shocking Family Court Ruling
Family Court Debtor’s Prison Exists in America, Nishani Naidoo’s Case Shocks Legal Experts
Story First Broke on Frank Report
Not an Isolated Case. Corrupt Family Court Debtor’s Prison is Rampant in America.
By Richard Luthmann
On the August 21, 2024, episode of “The Unknown” podcast, investigative journalists Michael Volpe and Richard Luthmann shed light on an alarming story about Family Court Debtor’s Prisons and the case of Nishani Naidoo. The story, originally reported on this outlet by Frank Parlato, revolves around Naidoo, a corporate lawyer with degrees from Harvard and Columbia, who found herself behind bars for unpaid legal fees during her contentious divorce proceedings.
The case was overseen by Connecticut Family Court Judge Erika Tindill, who ordered Naidoo to pay $37,512.50 in legal fees to her ex-husband’s attorney, Gary Cohen. Naidoo, who had not been able to work as a corporate lawyer while managing the divorce and caring for her children, requested time to pay the fees after selling a rental property. Despite her ex-husband’s and his lawyer’s objections, Judge Tindill unilaterally sent Naidoo to jail on contempt charges, starting on August 14, 2024.
The podcast highlights the disturbing re-emergence of debtor’s prisons in the U.S., particularly within family courts. Despite debtor’s prisons being officially abolished in 1833, cases like Naidoo’s show that individuals, especially women, are still being jailed for failing to pay legal fees in civil matters, not for committing crimes.
Volpe and Luthmann discuss several other similar cases, including that of Jim Sisco in Virginia and Dr. Tewari, David Weigel, and Guy Simonetti in New York, where family court judges have sent individuals to jail over unpaid legal fees for their ex-spouses’ lawyers.
This discussion emphasizes the urgent need for reform in family courts. The current system continues to strip individuals of their civil rights and send them to jail for civil debt, a practice that should have ended nearly two centuries ago.
Transcript
Michael Volpe
Alright, let’s get the next story up. One of our friends broke this, and let me find it. Frank Parlato writes at the Frank Report. That’s frankreport.com. But you’ve written about this, so give details of this story. What’s going on here? It’s titled, Mom jailed for not paying X’s lawyer in Connecticut family court.
Richard Luthmann
Yeah, so what we have is a situation where we have a protracted divorce proceeding, and it’s in front of Judge Erika Tindill in Connecticut. And Nishani Naidoo, she’s a corporate lawyer. She’s a Columbia Law graduate, Harvard Law undergrad, a very accomplished woman. But basically, her job of late has been to be a caregiver for her children and manage this divorce. She hasn’t been able to go out there and be a corporate lawyer. She’s been dealing with the family court drain, for lack of a better term. So, the lawyer for her husband put in an order to try to get money.
Richard Luthmann
Part of the, I think, the $140,000 that was awarded, fees to the lawyer, to Gary Cohen. Attorney Gary I. Cohen in Stamford, Connecticut. I think $37,512.50 was the number, and the judge ordered the fees to be paid immediately. And what Ms Naidoo said is ‘Look, you decreed me one of our the vacation home, you know, one of the secondary homes, it’s up for sale.’ It’s a rental. I think it was a rental property. It was a rental property. ‘It’s up for sale. The closing is at the end of August. When it closes at the end of August, I can pay. I’m not working as a corporate lawyer. I’m not doing this – trying to deal with the aftermath of this case, which has destroyed my professional reputation. So, I’m trying to deal with taking care of the kids.’ And so Judge Tindall says, ‘No dice.’
Richard Luthmann
Now, what’s important about this is she says ‘no dice’ over the objection of Attorney Gary Cohen and over the objection of the ex-husband. Judge Tindill, sua sponte, on her own, sent Naidoo to family court debtor’s prison in Connecticut. She jailed her for contempt starting August 14th. Last week. She just got out on Monday when she was able to get bonded okay. On Monday. But she sat in jail over the weekend in Connecticut, which is not a nice place to be, okay. And basically your life is in your own hands in certain places, especially Connecticut and other jails.
Richard Luthmann
You know, Rikers Island is one that comes to mind where it doesn’t matter who you are. If you get jailed for jaywalking or looking the wrong way as a judge, you go to the same place where the people are there for murder. You get the general population prior to, so this situation is, it’s a crazy situation of how we have debtors prison in family courts. We have, you know, in criminal court, you actually have rights. You would go in, you would see the judge, and the judge would let you out, released on your own recognizance, or you’d be able to get bail.
Richard Luthmann
Here, the judge is throwing you away, not for doing anything wrong or for anything suspected of doing anything wrong. But because you haven’t been able to pay. It is not a child support payment but a lawyer’s fee. This is a legal thing. And had Naidoo walked into the District Court of Connecticut, or as anybody else walks into a federal bankruptcy court and filed a petition for relief for bankruptcy and included that attorney’s fee as as a debt, they would be an automatic stay. The federal courts say you were not allowed to do anything.
Richard Luthmann
Now, this is the crazy part that they’re doing and end-run around the system and allowing for this debtor prison to happen. We wrote about the article in 1833, when debtor’s prison was abolished in the United States. 1831 before we had states of the Union, they had the President’s written communication to Congress. And 1831, in December, when he delivered it, Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory…
Michael Volpe
One of my favorite presidents.
Richard Luthmann
He said in 1831, we needed to get rid of these debtor’s prisons because they infringed upon personal liberty. This is 1831, and it took Congress until 1833 to get their act together and fully abolish it. But the ACLU has been on top of this, where we have debtors prisons in many contexts, including in the family court context. It seems to be particularly, in particular, people are going to jail and sitting there for days and weeks and months on end for meaningless amounts, in some cases, $200.
Michael Volpe
I’ve got an article up that I wrote late last year from Virginia; here, it’s a custody case. But here, the stint had to do with unpaid bills, which the court ordered Jim Sisco, that’s the guy, to pay his ex-wife’s lawyers. The same thing. And by the way, the judge who ordered him to go to jail was Penney S. Azcarate. You may recognize her. She presided over the Depp v. Heard trial, so got a big reputation as a great judge, and Depp-Heard sent this guy to jail for not being able to pay his ex wife’s bills, his ex wife’s legal bills.
Michael Volpe
And that’s Jim right there. It was the same kind of thing where he had the money; it may not have cleared or something like that, and instead of working something out, they sent them to jail. I think, the same kind of thing about five days. But if you think it’s completely unique, it’s not. Right there. A case out of Virginia, same thing.
Richard Luthmann
And we and I talk about it in my article that I recetly published on the Frank Report, and my article talks about the pattern that we have here with that out of control judges. One of the investigative reports that just came out in New York was by NBC4’s investigative journalist Sarah Wallace with more evidence. She showed that at least six individuals in front of a certain Family Court judge, Judge Waterman-Marshall, in New York City, Manhattan, have over six legal complaints to the Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Richard Luthmann
One is Dr. Tewari, a pediatric anesthesiologist who specializes in helping special needs children. This man cannot hurt a fly, yet he was for what he went to jail for the fact that there was $137,000 that he said, ‘I haven’t been able to liquidate it yet. I need time to liquidate the money. And I have money, but I it’s not liquid. I can’t pay that fee right now to the lawyers.’ And so…
Michael Volpe
It wasn’t his lawyers. It was his ex-wife’s lawyers.
Richard Luthmann
It was his ex’s lawyers. That’s right.
Michael Volpe
We’ve already found three cases where someone went to jail, not even for unpaid child support, not even their own lawyer’s fees, but for the opposite lawyers fees.
Richard Luthmann
That’s right. I also mentioned David Weigel in that article. David Weigel went to Rikers’ for a weekend over a paperwork mishap. It shows that this use of sending individuals to jail for contempt in the civil sense of family court is a process that has been abused.
Richard Luthmann
I also have a disabled, retired 9-11 responder and NYPD detective named Guy Simonetti. He was threatened to go to debtor’s prison at Rikers Island. He’s basically in a walker, okay. He’s in his mid-60s, and the judge in Staten Island, named Ron Castorina, one of the great rogues of our time, threatened to send this man to Rikers Island. Okay, so you have it; it’s happening all over the country.
Michael Volpe
A guy in Rikers who’s got unpaid bills, and he’s going to be sharing the cell block with some murderers, rapists, armed robbers.
Richard Luthmann
In Rikers, especially Michael. And with Rikers, you get to bring a calculator into the store, and you get to calculate the $950 or the retail theft, right? And then if you get arrested, they take you in, you see the judge, and they let you out because there’s no cash bail. If you assault the shopkeeper on the way out, they’ll still let you out. No cash bail. So whoever’s left in Rikers at this point, they’re not nice people. So you have debtor’s prison in the same general population with people that will stab you just for the hell of it – not for any good reason other than that they don’t like the look on your face.
Family Court Debtor’s Prisons on 'The Unknown' Podcast