Two Rockville Centre residents to vie for First District Court

Judges Susan Kluewer and Anthony Paradiso, both Rockville Centre residents, have announced their intention to run for Nassau County’s First District Court. The position, currently held by Kluewer, carries the title and duties of president of the court’s Board of Judges.

The vote will take place during the general election in November.

Susan Kluewer

Kluewer, 64, a Nassau County District Court judge since March 2000, has been nominated to run for re-election as president of the Board of Judges. She has been rated “highly qualified” by the Suffolk County Bar Association. Kluewer was re-elected to a six-year term in 2006 and is awaiting a rating from the Independent Judicial Election Qualification Commission, which did not exist when she last ran for the First District seat.

County District Court has been called “the court closest to the people.” It hears landlord/tenant and small-claims cases as well as civil suits under $15,000. It has jurisdiction over felony arraignments and all phases of misdemeanors. Kluewer has presided over criminal cases since 2004. Since her appointment as acting county court judge in 2007, she has also handled pre-indictment felonies.

Kluewer has a wide range of experience in private practice, public-interest law and the court system. For 11 years, she clerked for Justice Stanley Harwood, first in New York State Supreme Court and later in the Appellate Division, taking part in reviews of other judges’ work and in landmark decisions on mercury poisoning in the workplace, grandparents’ rights and General Electric’s pollution of the Hudson River.

For eight years she was counsel to and then partner in the Garden City law firm Reisman, Peirez & Reisman, specializing in employment-discrimination cases, appellate practice, commercial litigation and matrimonial matters.