James E. d'Auguste

Knows the law and flexible with scheduling.

My experience is limited to Judge d'Auguste in Nuisance which the City of New York files with regards to short term rentals. I have litigated several such cases before him and am also aware of the opinions of other private lawyers who have litigated such cases against NYC before him. While the govenment's website is supposed to assign judges randomly to different judges, this is not the case with regards to these Nuisance cases, which since 2013 in New York County have usually been assigned to only him. While he was quite unfriendly toward me in the courtroom he became very friendly toward me in his chambers, which was rather weird. Overall, he was very biased toward NYC, even when its lawyers admitted that my legal argument had merit -- he would still rule for NYC. Instead of addressing my actual legal arguments in my motions to dismiss, the judge did make up arguments that I never made which he then criticized and rejected. He had urged the parties to use him to resolve disputes, which I did do. But after we put a lot of effort into briefing and arguing, he did not bother to ever rule on our arguments until he decided (rejected) our motions to dismiss. So, in short, he is biased, [Redacted by Ed.] and lacking in any integrity. I do not doubt that he is intelligent, which makes him all the more dangerous. I would never willingly let him be involved in any case of mine, sadly.

Terrible. Deserves a 0. Full of himself, idiotic, does not listen, horrible personality. Also the slowest judge in the world. Should not be a judge even with the slow standard in NY state court.

Justice d'Auguste is thoughtful, intelligent, knows the law and the cases before him; he is unfailingly respectful to attorneys appearing before him on both sides of the "v". In that sense, he is a pleasure to litigate before. That said, it should not take - literally - years to get a conference or to have a simple motion heard and multiple months thereafter to get a decision. Justice delayed, as they rightly say, is justice denied.