Michael Telesca:
A judge in pursuit of common ground

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Michael Telesca has never been known as a hanging judge.
Instead, he has acquired a reputation as a settling judge, a jurist who likes a good negotiation. If he thinks public time and money can be saved, he bends the wills of the attorneys, defendants and plaintiffs to find common ground.
“He has always been one to … work out a compromise when the solution wasn’t clear-cut, one way or the other,” says First National Bank of Rochester president Carlos Carballada, who on occasion has appeared in Telesca’s courtroom and on the links as the judge’s golf partner.
“I have a knack of settling things,” agrees Telesca, a U.S. District Court judge for 16 years, seven of them as chief judge for the Western District.
His reputation for evenhandedness has endured even as his longtime residence in Gates, as well as community and political activities, have ensured that, not infrequently, he has presided over cases in which he knows several of the participants.
“You are not going to receive any special consideration in his courtroom,” says Telesca’s old friend Robert Witmer, a lawyer with Nixon, Hargrave, Devans & Doyle LLP. “He will be studiously fair.”
From the time he took over as Rochester’s only U.S. District judge (with two others in Buffalo), Telesca sought to make the federal court more accessible, more civil and more organized–for federal employees, members of the public and members of the bar, defendants and plaintiffs.
“He spends every day on the bench trying to do the right thing for this community,” Chief Judge David Larimer says.
Much of Telesca’s course in life was set in his youth, as he learned to negotiate his path amid the city’s mix of ethnic groups and economic classes while pursuing the education prized by his immigrant parents.
Telesca was born in 1929, a month after the stock market crash. His father, Michael, was a laborer and clothing presser from Italy whose first wife died in the flu epidemic of 1918. He arranged to marry again and provide a mother for his three children.
Telesca’s mother, Agata Locurci, was escorted on the boat from Italy to America by her two brothers. The same day the group arrived in Philadelphia, Telesca’s mother was wed in Camden, N.J., to the man she had never seen before.
The couple had two children of their own, Mary, and the youngest, Michael.
His parents’ marriage, Telesca says, taught him about commitment.
“There was no going back for my mother. Didn’t know the language, didn’t know him,” he says.
In Rochester, Telesca’s mother, with a sixth-grade education, was a fixture in the 16th Ward neighborhood, where other Italian immigrants would bring her letters from home to read and have her write replies. Telesca spoke English in school and Italian at home.
He loved to read, and the local branch librarian let him have a special adult card so he could borrow whatever books he wanted.
“I’d bring new words home to my folks,” he says. “There was a power to knowledge, and this is how the world would be opened up.”
When he was 12, Telesca worked mornings and afternoons as a free-lance newspaper boy, selling the Democrat and Chronicle, the Times-Union and, on Sundays, select New York newspapers to the denizens of places such as the University Club. The job gave him a chance to meet some of Rochester’s more upscale citizens, including financial types who had Telesca deliver the final edition of the Times-Union, with the latest stock market prices.
At Franklin High School he mixed with other first-generation Americans, the children of German, Polish and Irish parents.
Attending the University of Rochester was a completely different experience, not because of the work, but the people. Telesca suddenly was surrounded by young men–the school was male-only at the time–with simple American names, nice clothes and their own cars. His interest in academics overcame his social discomfort.
While working part time at Sears, Roebuck and Co. at the Exchange Street warehouse, Telesca met the boss’ secretary, Ethel. They began to date and married in 1953, after Telesca had finished his first year at the University of Buffalo Law School. After he graduated, the couple moved to Quantico, Va., where Telesca completed two years with the U.S. Marine Corps. There the couple’s first child, Michele, was born.
The family returned to Rochester and, through a friend, Telesca landed a job as an associate with Lamb, Webster & Jordan (eventually Lamb, Webster, Walz & Telesca). The family moved into a house in Gates, opposite the Brook-Lea Country Club on Pixley Road, where the Telescas have lived ever since. The Telescas’ second child, Stephen, was born two years later, in 1959.
In his practice, Telesca specialized in litigation and municipal law, and worked in Gates as the town attorney. As his legal experience grew, so did his circle of friends and acquaintances. He also became involved in Republican politics.
“I like the idea of small government,” he says of his affinity for the GOP. “I think that the government that is closest to the people is the best.”
He became the campaign manager for Republican congressional candidate Barber Conable, a role he held from 1964 through 1970. The first campaign was tough, Conable recalls. Nobody in Monroe County knew Conable, and in the presidential election, incumbent Democrat Lyndon Johnson was on his way to a landslide win over Republican challenger Barry Goldwater.
Telesca helped Conable learn the lay of the land. “He was very well-known, and a gregarious man,” Conable says. “He was highly respected in Gates.”
In spite of the odds, Conable says, “I was one of the few Republicans to get elected that year.” He ended up serving two decades in Congress and later served as head of the World Bank.
Telesca gave up advising on other campaigns when he decided to run his own, for Surrogate Court judge.
“The good part of the experience is it’s humbling to go out to the public and ask for their support,” he says about being a candidate.
He won the job, which involved settling estates and setting up guardianships for children and people who were mentally disabled. Telesca prided himself on running the court without the political patronage that used to guide many of the appointments to lucrative guardianships.
“I learned early on in his court that a lot of things in the estates area can be somewhat esoteric,” says George Hamlin IV, a former estates attorney and now president of Canandaigua National Bank & Trust Co. Telesca “had the skill to completely understand the esoterica on the one hand and not lose sight of the practical purpose on the other.”
In 1981, U.S. District Judge Harold Burke, who after 44 years on the bench was set to retire to senior status, grew ill and died.
A protracted political process to find a successor began, with neophyte New York Sen. Alfonse D’Amato playing a crucial role as the Republican who would recommend an appointee to President Ronald Reagan.
Some 40 lawyers and judges submitted applications to a screening committee. Though Telesca had the proper party credentials, and the Italian background D’Amato was believed to favor, other candidates were said to have done more for the Republican Party, or had criminal-court experience.
Yet Telesca, as the only Surrogate Court judge, had the administrative experience the position required, as well as being a sitting judge, as the Reagan administration wanted. He also had a lot of support, including that of Conable, local business organizations and a senior judge on the New York State Court of Appeals.
In November 1981, D’Amato announced his decision to submit Telesca’s name for the appointment. In March 1982, Reagan called Telesca at home to offer him the job. Following confirmation by the Senate, Telesca was sworn in that May.
Waiting for him were 800 cases that had piled up after Burke had died. Telesca’s first task was to shore up the staff working for the federal court.
“I had to bring this court into the 20th century,” Telesca says.
The work continued to pile up, especially as new federal laws yielded fresh antidiscrimination lawsuits and legal actions by prisoners. In 1987, after requesting help to deal with the 900 cases he was handling, Rochester got a second U.S. District judge, David Larimer.
Two years later, Telesca earned the seven-year appointment to chief judge for the 17-county Western District, by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist, and continued to seek–and receive–permission to add more people to the judicial federal roster.
The court also had started a federal defender program to give criminal defendants the services of specialists in federal sentencing, a very complex system.
“We had put in an infrastructure,” Telesca says. “The administration is necessary to get the job done.”
Since the post of chief judge passed to Larimer two years ago, Telesca has seen his load lighten somewhat. With senior status, he chose to stop taking the civil complaints of prisoners. He spends two winter months in Palm Springs, Calif., where he talks with and faxes to his clerks and secretary daily–and manages to get in a daily game of golf as well.
Attention to minutiae is part of his job, a part that keeps a federal judge from being overwhelmed with the 300 to 400 cases he is carrying at any one time.
“You have to be a bit compulsive to be a federal judge,” he says.
Telesca periodically goes to Washington, D.C., to teach newly appointed federal judges some of the tricks of the trade.
“The federal system is totally different than any state system,” he notes. For instance, federal judges are assigned both civil and criminal cases, and must be able to do research quickly and produce decisions. “A federal judge has to control his docket.”
Telesca still dictates his decisions into a tape recorder, a practice he took up as a young lawyer when he realized it would increase his productivity.
Friends and acquaintances, even those he has ruled against, call him one of the area’s finest jurists; independent-minded, but also kind toward the people who come into his courtroom.
“He’s got extraordinary people skills,” says Witmer of Nixon, Hargrave. “He’s not cloistered.”
“I think he especially values other people and judges them on integrity, honesty and moral compass,” Larimer says.
Yet his lofty principles do not keep him from more everyday interests. He likes to talk about his two grandchildren, sports and, especially, local politics. Larimer says even now Telesca manages to keep abreast of the races, and he usually is pretty accurate in predicting who will win.
When he used to play tennis at Mid-Town Tennis & Athletic Club, Telesca carried himself like an ordinary guy, says fellow member David Flaum of Flaum Management Co. Inc. “You would never guess that he was a big federal judge.”
Telesca has no trouble remembering who he is.
“I come to work every day, and I’m the luckiest guy in town. Without political pressure … my job is to do the right thing,” he says. “What a joy.”

8/21/98