Quantcast

Retired justice honored with award in name of late local judge

Retired justice honored with award in name of late local judge
Photo by Caroline Ourso

Call it a celebration of a life well-lived — and a job well-done.

Local luminaries and legal eagles gathered this month to honor the legacy of the late Kings County jurist Justice William Thompson, by presenting another accomplished judge with an award in his name.

Celebrants packed the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn Heights for the Feb. 13 event — co-hosted by the Brooklyn Bar and Judicial Friends associations — where they presented retired state Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Hall with the first-ever Hon. William C. Thompson Award, recognizing Hall’s near decade on the bench.

Hall served as an associate justice in the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court, which former Gov. David Patterson appointed her to in March 2009. She retired from the bench nine years later, in March 2018 — roughly nine months before Thompson died last December at 94-years-old.

Thompson’s distinguished career included such trailblazing achievements as serving as Brooklyn’s first black state senator, Kings County’s first black administrative judge, and the first black New York State Supreme Court justice.