Anthony V. Cardona, the presiding justice in the Albany-based Third Department since 1995, died Sunday evening of cancer. He was 70. (Full obituary by Joel Stashenko)
Administrative duties had been handed over to Justice Thomas E. Mercure in late January (NYLJ, Feb. 1) when Justice Cardona was hospitalized. He underwent surgery on Jan. 23. He died in St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany.
Justice Cardona had announced his intention to retire at the end of 2011.
He was appointed presiding justice by Governor Mario M. Cuomo in 1994 and reappointed by George E. Pataki in 2005.
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Judge Cherished Opinions Standing Up for the ‘Little Guy’
In In re Golden, 56 AD3d 1109 (2008), Justice Cardona concluded that both common law and state Human Services Law permit transgendered individuals to legally assume a new name to reflect their new identification; in People v. Pauly, 21 AD3d 595 (2005), he rejected constitutional challenges to the retroactive application of Rockefeller drug law reforms; and in Auto. Ins. Co. of Hartford v. Cook, 21 AD3d 1155 (2001), in dissent, he said an insurer has a duty to defend a policyholder who killed an intruder in self-defense.
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