Citing the $300 million state judicial budget cut, the resulting hiring freeze and the loss of justices on the Manhattan Supreme Court Commercial Division, longtime Commercial Division Justice Andrea Masley on Tuesday denied a joint-party request in a “complex commercial action” for appointment of a judicial hearing officer to supervise far-reaching discovery “burdened by a multitude of … issues.”

In her three-page order addressing the request made in a 2018-filed contract-based action lodged by the highly successful songwriter Jacob Kashner Hindlin, known widely as “JKash,” against two music production companies, Masley wrote that “there are no judicial hearing officers available because of budget cuts.” She then instead appointed a volunteer special master to supervise the discovery. And she wrote that “the court is grateful to [the appointed] Mr. [Mark] Alcott,” a longtime of counsel of at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison “and the many other retired attorneys who volunteered to the Office of Court Administration,” under a New York County Lawyers Association program to assist during times of “economic crisis.”

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