Kimba Wood

See also: United States District Court for the Southern District of New York

On April 13, 2018, Wood presided over a hearing to consider the request of Michael Cohen, a personal attorney for President Donald Trump, to privately review the materials seized by the FBI during a search of Cohen's office and residences. Cohen's attorney asked Wood to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the government from reviewing the seized materials. The FBI obtained a search warrant signed by a federal judge before conducting the search but did not publicly disclose the purpose of the search.^[4]

During a hearing on April 16, 2018, Wood denied Cohen's initial request for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from reviewing the seized materials.^[5]

With the agreement of the parties, on April 26, 2018, Wood appointed former Judge Barbara Jones as a special master to review the seized materials to determine what material is protected by attorney-client privilege.^[6]

See also: United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (U.S. v. Neville)

On March 10, 2014, Judge Wood sentenced Kevin Neville, a former Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) dispatcher, to twenty-one months in prison for his filing of fraudulent disability claims.^[7]

Neville was part of a group of former LIRR employees that made fraudulent claims to the federal Railroad Retirement Board. Neville collected about $200,000 after claiming that he had very bad back pain. In the prosecution of the case against Neville, the government found that the man was an avid golfer and shoveled snow in the winter months, despite assertions that he had limited mobility.^[7]

Neville's lawyer asked that Judge Wood sentence his client to probation, but she declined to do so. Neville was sentenced to one year and nine months in jail in the hope of deterring future fraud.^[7]

See also: United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Arista Records LLC, et al., v. Lime Group LLC, et al., 06-cv-5936-KMW)

Judge Wood presided in a lawsuit between the Recording Industry Artists Association and LimeWire. Judge Wood ruled on May 11, 2010, that the software sharing service was involved in copyright infringement of music owned by major record companies. Attorneys for LimeWire did not appeal the ruling to the New York City-based Second Circuit Court of Appeals and opted to settle for $105 million.^[8][9]

See also: United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, v. Christie's Inc.,, 98-cv-7664-KMW)

In 1998, Wood presided over the case of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem v. Christie's, Inc., in which the ownership of the celebrated Archimedes Palimpsest was disputed.^[10] A palimpsest is a manuscript scroll or book from which the text has been scraped off and overwritten, in which the original text can still be read. The Archimedes Palimpsest is a 10th-century copy of several works by ancient Greek writers Archimedes of Syracuse, a mathematician and physicist of the third century BC, and the philosopher Aristotle. In the 12th century, a liturgical text had been written over the work of Archimedes. The book included the only surviving copy of a work of Archimedes, which would otherwise be unknown today, that anticipated some of the discoveries of integral calculus. Mathematicians consider the techniques that Archimedes used in that work to be brilliant. A French collector, Anne Guersan, claiming to be the book's owner, had arranged for it to be sold by Christie's auction house in New York. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem is the governing authority of one of the Eastern Orthodox churches. The Patriarchate claimed that the book had been stolen from one of its monasteries in the 1920s. Judge Wood ruled in favor of Christie's, determining that French law was applicable in this case. Under French law, one who possesses something publicly, peacefully, continuously, and unambiguously for thirty years is its owner. Wood also wrote that if New York law were applicable, she would find in favor of Christie's on laches grounds.^[11] The book was then sold to an American collector for about $2 million. It has since been kept at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where scientists using modern techniques have been able to read parts of it that could not be read before. For more on the palimpsest, see: The Archimedes Palimpsest Project.