George Pratt, judge on ABSCAM, Agent Orange cases, dies at 97

As a federal district court judge, George Pratt presided over some of the most high-profile cases of the last century, most notably those of ABSCAM and Agent Orange. Yet like any father, he also had to deal with the court of Parents vs. Children.

"A guy I once worked with had a Ponzi scheme," recalled Lise Pratt, of Gordonsville, Virginia, one of the jurist’s four children. "I was in high school ... and I came home and told my dad and he said, 'That's against the law.' I said, 'No, it's not.' And he said, 'Well, yeah, it is.' "

"Then you said, 'I'd like to speak to a lawyer about that,' " her sister, Marcy Burke, also of Gordonsville, chimed in. "And he said, 'Go ahead and speak to a lawyer. And then when they want a decision, they'll come to the judge: Me!' "

Pratt indeed was quick with a quip, said attorney Joe Ryan, of Huntington, a friend of many decades. A workhorse judge who could stay late into the night during a crucial hearing and expect the attorneys to do so as well, "He would say, 'Before we go to bed, we're going to put this case to bed.' "

Pratt died at age 97 on Dec. 8 of natural causes at Stony Brook University Hospital. A longtime resident of East Norwich, he recently lived in the Jefferson’s Ferry retirement community in South Setauket.

As distinguished as he was as a jurist, he was equally devoted to song. At Yale University, from which he graduated in 1950, Pratt sang in the glee club — including on a government-sponsored trip to Europe in 1949 — and in his senior year served as president.

From the 1950s on, he sang with the choir of the Community Church of Syosset and with the North Shore Community Chorus and the Huntington Men’s Chorus. As part of the now-defunct Long Island Chorale, he and his two daughters toured China, Australia and New Zealand.

"When we were younger he would take us to the Yale football games, and taught us how to sing harmony in the back of a station wagon on the way there," Burke said.

George Cheney Pratt was born May 22, 1928, in upstate Corning, the youngest of three children of George Wollage Pratt and Muriel Addie Cheney Pratt. His father was a Steuben County Surrogate Court judge, and his grandfather Harry H. Pratt was a two-term U.S. congressman.

After graduating from Corning Free Academy, where he played varsity sports including football and badminton, his family said, George C. Pratt went on to Yale, graduating from its law school in 1953.

The previous year he had married Carol June Hoffman — who had been "within months of taking her vows to be a nun," said their son William "Duffy" Pratt, of Missouri City, Texas, She died in 2016 and Pratt married Susanah Kuchenbrod the following year.

Moving to Levittown in the mid-1950s, eventually going on to homes in Syosset and finally East Norwich, Pratt worked as an attorney in private practice and for several Nassau County villages and the Syosset Central School District, as well as special counsel for the Nassau County Board of Supervisors.

In 1976 he was appointed as a federal district judge for the Eastern District of New York, headquartered in Brooklyn. Pratt was instrumental in establishing an additional Eastern District courthouse, said Ryan, then-president of the Nassau County Bar Association, with whom Pratt worked on the expansion. After two earlier locations, it is now in Central Islip.

In the Eastern District Court and with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, to which he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, Pratt presided over cases including two landmarks: that of the FBI sting code-named ABSCAM, in which several U.S. congressmen and others were convicted on bribery and corruption charges, and that of Vietnam War veterans suing over exposure to the toxic chemical compound Agent Orange, in which he allowed the case to move forward as a class-action suit before turning it over to another judge.

From 1978 to 1993 Pratt was an adjunct law professor at St. John’s University Law School and Hofstra University Law School. In 1993, granted senior status, with a reduced judicial workload, he spent a decade as a law professor at Touro Law Center in Central Islip.

Pratt formally retired from the bench in 1995 and returned to private practice, primarily as an arbitrator for large commercial disputes.

He is survived by his children, including George W. Pratt, of Salt Lake City, and his wife, as well as five grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his sisters, Muriel and Priscilla.

A memorial service will be held Jan. 2 at the Community Church of Syosset. Donations made be made to the MIND Institute of UC Davis Health Sciences Development in Sacramento, California, for research into ADNP, a rare genetic disorder affecting children including Pratt’s great-granddaughter Greta.