Harrison ruling judge: I meant no disrespect

A judge who issued a bizarre ruling in the style of a George Harrison song said today he meant no disrespect.

Judge Robert Gigante issued the lyrical ruling as part of a case involving a controversial doctor who once treated the Beatles legend.

New York cancer doctor Gil Lederman is being sued over claims that he gave too much radiation to a patient, leading to her death.

Dr Lederman is also remembered as the doctor who was once accused of forcing the former Beatle to autograph a guitar while on his death bed.

Judge Gigante was ruling on the doctor’s request for a change of venue.

He agreed that the doctor could not get a fair trial on New York’s Staten Island because of the publicity surrounding the Harrison case.

But in doing so, he wrote his ruling as a parody of the Harrison classic, Something.

He wrote: “Something in the folks he treats / Attracts bad press like no other doctor.

He’s in our jurisdiction now / He gets Beatle autographs somehow.”

The Judge started the ruling with the words, in brackets, “with apologies to the late George Harrison“.

Instead of keeping the case on Staten Island, the judge moved it to the New York state capital, Albany.

He concluded: “And all I have to do is move this trial / Somewhere they don’t know George Harrison.

“If this case I were to keep / Defendant would gently weep.”

The ruling shocked the family of colon cancer victim, Suzanne Mikul, who died after being treated by Dr Lederman and his colleagues at Staten Island University Hospital.

The family of the 66-year-old woman from New Mexico claim the doctors gave her too much radiation in December 2001, causing her death two months later.

The family’s lawyer, Steven North, called the ruling-in-song “offensive”.

But the judge told the New York Daily News that the style of his ruling had “nothing to do with the substance of the case” against Dr Lederman.

“I would never be disrespectful of the plaintiff,” he said.

Dr Lederman was the subject of wide publicity earlier this year over claims that he made Harrison, who was dying from cancer, autograph a guitar for his teenage son.

According to the legal papers in that case, stricken Harrison answered: “I don’t even know how to spell my name any more.”

He died two weeks after the incident in November 2001.

The legal dispute was finally settled after the doctor gave the guitar to Harrison’s family.