A federal judge has taken Luzerne County attorney Cynthia L. Pollick to task for what the judge called “outlandish” fee requests and “inflammatory conduct” in a civil rights case.

In a lengthy 136-page rebuke, U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann of the Middle District of Pennsylvania chastised Pollick over her fee petition for nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in a decade-long case that settled for $25,000.

“Sad to say, after 10 years of protracted and unnecessarily contentious litigation, it appears that all plaintiff's counsel, Cynthia L. Pollick, esquire, has managed to accomplish is disrespecting this court as an institution and embarrassing herself in the eyes of many of its constituents,” Brann wrote in his opinion.