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The judge, Sterling Johnson Jr., sent staff members to visit several Brooklyn businesses that were sued by Mike Costello, a paraplegic man, and found that most if not all were never made more accessible to disabled people.

The judge used the observation as part of a strident ruling last year denying more than $15,000 in legal fees to Mr. Costello’s lawyers, Ben-Zion Bradley Weitz and Adam Shore, finding that their lawsuits did nothing to ensure that Mr. Costello or any other disabled person had better access to the businesses.

But this week the appellate court reversed Judge Johnson’s decision and took the rare move of ordering that the case be assigned to a different judge. The appellate panel found that while Judge Johnson may have been correct in his observations that the businesses had not been repaired, and while most of the arguments in the appeal “lack merit,” judges are not permitted to observe, or take “judicial notice,” of facts that are subject to dispute.

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