Judge Elfvin dies at 91

Listen to this article

Federal Judge John T. Elfvin, a retired judge with a long and sometimes controversial career on the bench, died Tuesday afternoon in Lancaster after an illness. He was 91.
Elfvin, appointed by President Gerald Ford, served for nearly 33 years as a judge in the Western District of New York in Buffalo, retiring in October 2007 at the age of 89.
Toward the end of his career, he rejected the federal sentencing guidelines and was admonished for failing to follow remand instructions to comply with them.
Early in his judicial career, he presided in the legal battle over the 1971 uprising by prisoners in Attica Correctional Facility, which ultimately was settled by another judge.
Several Western New York litigators remember him as a fair and impartial arbiter.
“He could be somewhat unpredictable, but he would often go out of his way to be fair,” said Joel Daniels, a Buffalo lawyer. “He wasn’t afraid to do what he thought was the right thing.”
“Judge Elfvin reminded me in many ways of Judge Harold Burke, who presided here in Rochester for years. They were old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants judges who may have ruffled feathers at times, but in the end dispensed justice in the best tradition of the federal bench,” said David Rothenberg, of Geiger and Rothenberg LLP and a former assistant U.S. attorney (1978-1982). “I’m very sorry to hear of his passing.”
“I thought he was one of the best judges in the state,” said Buffalo attorney James Ostrowski, former chairman of the Erie County Bar’s human rights committee and president of Free New York, a statewide public policy group based in Buffalo. “He was very hard working, he was very fair. You could never detect any bias toward either side.”
Elfvin was a “brilliant independent judge, a dying breed,” attorney Paul Cambria wrote in an e-mail.
“He was always an asset to this court,” Chief Judge Richard Arcara told The Buffalo News.
Before his appointment to the federal bench in 1974, Elfvin was in private practice for many years and served for three years as U.S. Attorney for the Western District.
He was born June 30, 1917, in Montour Falls, near Watkins Glen. Elfvin graduated from Cornell University in 1942 and earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1947 after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Judge Elfvin is survived by the former Peggy Pierce, his wife since 1960.
— [email protected]