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	Rev. Suing Church Seeks New Judge By Thomas Zambito New York Daily News October 15, 2006 http://www.nydailynews.com/10-15-2006/news/local/story/461749p-388510c.html A Catholic priest who claims he was canned from his job at a parochial school for speaking out against clergy abuse wants to bump a federal judge off his case because of his ties to the Catholic Church. The Rev. Robert Hoatson wants Manhattan Judge Paul Crotty to recuse himself from Hoatson's discrimination suit against the New York Archdiocese and Edward Cardinal Egan. Hoatson says Crotty's wife, Jane, is involved in a real estate deal with the archdiocese and his brother Robert is the president of the Guild of Catholic Lawyers of the Archdiocese of New York. "A Catholic judge whose family has financial and longstanding ties and close relations with a litigant adverse to me should take the reasonable or prudent step of removing himself from this case," Hoatson wrote. But attorneys for the archdiocese say judges should not be forced to renounce their religion in order to do their job. "It simply cannot be a rule that where a judge is an active Roman Catholic and where, not surprisingly, he and his family might have interacted with church institutions in their lives, that judge cannot sit on cases that affect the church," attorneys for the archdiocese wrote. "If such a rule were applied it would not be long before any case involving religious institutions required a litmus test of trial judges, jurors and appellate judges." Church attorneys are seeking sanctions against Hoatson's lawyer, John Aretakis, for unprofessional behavior. Aretakis has filed lawsuits on behalf of hundreds of individuals who say they were abused by priests. Hoatson, who says he was a victim of abuse by a priest, was removed from his administrative post at a Newark school after airing allegations of clergy abuse at a New York State legislative hearing. Hoatson sued Egan as well as the bishops of Albany and Newark, claiming they conspired against him and caused him to lose his job. Crotty, 65, who served as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's corporation counsel and as a commissioner of several city agencies in the Koch administration, is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.
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