A State Supreme Court judge ruled that Melissa DeRosa, who served as a senior aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is not entitled to more than $700,000 in tax dollars for legal fees she racked up after a state trooper’s retaliation claim against her had already been dismissed.
DeRosa was dropped as a defendant in the trooper’s civil sexual harassment suit against the former Governor back in Sept. 2023. By then, New York state taxpayers had already spent a total of almost $1.1 million defending DeRosa in the case, according to the state comptroller’s office.
While New York State law entitles public officials sued in their official government capacity to a tax-funded legal defense when preapproved by the state attorney general, Judge Danielle Jose-Decker ruled Tuesday that the state comptroller’s office was right when it refused to pay DeRosa’s more recent legal bills.
DeRosa sued the comptroller’s office in December after it rejected her reimbursement request for legal services provided as late as April 2025 — 19 months after she was dropped from the Trooper 1 case. She and her lawyers at the firm Morvillo Abramowitz billed the state for an average 23 days per month over that 19-month time period.
“In order to qualify for payment of legal fees under Public Officers Law 17, Petitioner DeRosa would have to be engaged in the civil suit,” the judge said in her ruling.
Judge Jose-Decker noted Derosa had chosen not to step away from the Trooper 1 court battle, citing “no necessity for her to continue to actively participate in the litigation.”
DeRosa has remained a close, devoted Cuomo associate in the years since he resigned as governor in 2021. Her battle to voluntarily remain involved in the Trooper 1 court battle continued as the former governor waged his high-stakes, ultimately unsuccessful 2025 campaign for mayor, ending up before Federal Judge Taryn Merkl who issued a protective order last July, shutting out DeRosa and any other non-parties to the case.
Judge Merkl sided with the trooper who argued that granting DeRosa and her lawyers permission they sought to attend sensitive and personal depositions, including of the trooper’s medical and mental health providers, would likely cause embarrassment, oppression or undue expense. The judge indicated she remained open to non-parties attending proceedings if the other parties did not object.
In a statement, Melissa DeRosa’s attorney Catherine Foti said they would appeal the ruling. Foti said DeRosa was a public servant “sued baselessly and dragged through litigation for years” as a result of the 2021 investigation by Attorney General Letitia James. Foti called the investigation “fatally flawed.”
The AG’s investigation concluded that Cuomo had harassed 11 women — including “through unwelcome and unwanted touching, as well as by making numerous offensive and sexually suggestive comments.” The report also concluded the executive chamber had engaged in retaliation.
“Ms. DeRosa was rightly dismissed from Trooper #1’s blatant attempt at a money grab,” Foti said. “But the Court’s decision is not consistent with the law or past precedent — we look forward to this decision being overturned on appeal.”
The comptroller’s office also rejected DeRosa’s request for legal fees she incurred fighting a separate 2024 lawsuit the trooper filed against her and Cuomo in New York State Supreme Court alleging DeRosa had violated local Human Rights Law by accusing the trooper of extortion and threatening to sue her over her harassment claims.
In a Sept. 2025 letter to DeRosa’s lawyer, the comptroller’s office reminded DeRosa that the attorney general had already declined to preapprove her request for a tax-funded defense in that human rights case and that Derosa had only been entitled to state reimbursement for the federal trooper case, from which she had been dropped two years prior.
General Counsel Michael Kogut suggested DeRosa was “attempting to bootstrap her defense onto a completely separate federal matter, much less one to which she is no longer party.”
Trooper 1 — a member of the former governor’s security detail — said Cuomo made her feel violated with his behavior while she was on duty. She said he ran his finger down her back in an elevator, and on a different occasion, moved the palm of his hand across her abdomen to her hip where she carried her gun.
“A lot of times, he tried to be flirtatious. A lot of times, it came off creepy,” the trooper said in her 2021 testimony in a transcript released by the Office of the Attorney General.
“I don’t recall doing it, but if she said I did it, I believe her,” Cuomo said in his 2021 resignation speech regarding the trooper’s allegations of unwanted touching.
In years since, Cuomo has denied any wrongdoing in the case and has often called the accusations “politically motivated.”
New York taxpayers have spent $24 million so far defending Cuomo in three civil sexual harassment cases — including $13 million in the Trooper 1 case alone.
