A Brooklyn lawyer accused of trying every trick in the book to get hearing delays — including falsely claiming that his mom had died — pressed his luck one more time Monday with a clearly irritated judge.
Attorney John Nonnenmacher first landed in the cross hairs of Brooklyn federal Judge Allyne Ross when he went AWOL after jury selection in a police-brutality lawsuit he was handling.
Nonnenmacher sent another lawyer to court to tell Ross that his mom had died, apparently so he could get the proceeding delayed.
When Nonnenmacher’s mother was discovered very much alive, the judge went ballistic and ordered him to explain himself.
But the lawyer was unable to be reached for weeks, claiming he had been hospitalized with an undisclosed ailment.
Unfortunately for Nonnenmacher, Ross called the New Jersey hospital where he was supposed to be, and it denied he was ever a patient there.
“I was in the hospital for a month,” the lawyer whined to Ross on Monday.
He claimed he had been transferred to four hospitals for treatment and was left without “access to a computer or an iPhone.’’
But the judge spat back: “I don’t even want to get into the merits of that. I don’t think we need to hear any more . . . I have been trying to reach you through every possible means.
“You keep moving things off, moving things off, moving things off,” the judge fumed. “I cannot have these motions moved off anymore.”
Nonnenmacher protested, “You keep saying I keep putting things off, but —.”
Ross cut him off, saying, “I’m not going to argue with you.”
As for his supposed claim that his mother, Carol, had died, Nonnenmacher insisted that the other lawyer had misunderstood him: He told the attorney to ask for a delay because she was ill, not dead.
Nonnenmacher had previously claimed that he couldn’t meet another deadline because his uncle had died.
“My mother is very sick, is not very well at all,” he told Ross on Monday. “I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
Ross said she would rule on Nonnenmacher’s conduct at a later date.
Meanwhile, while his client in the police-brutality case has dropped her lawsuit against the city, the city wants penalties against Nonnenmacher, his co-counsel and the former plaintiff.
