"…the judges. Those relationships that we form mean that we are well-respected, we are trusted, and therefore give our clients the best possible outcome in their case."
Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C., on its own public marketing video. If SGB represented the party against you in Connecticut family court — or if any SGB partner served as your court-appointed Guardian Ad Litem before Hon. Leo V. Diana, Hon. Vikki Cooper, Hon. Thomas Joseph O'Neill, or Hon. Ronald E. Kowalski II — this site is the intake.
Tell Us About Your Case →If any of the three categories below describes your circumstances, you may be a class member in a forthcoming action. The intake is open. The intake is read by the principal personally.
If you were represented by SGB and feel — in retrospect — that the representation was not adversarial to the bench in the way it was promised to you.
If SGB was opposing counsel in your matter — plaintiff or defendant — and the outcome turned on a relationship the firm marketed publicly.
If any current or former SGB partner served as your court-appointed Guardian Ad Litem, Special Master, or AMC before Hon. Leo V. Diana, Hon. Vikki Cooper, Hon. Thomas Joseph O'Neill, or Hon. Ronald E. Kowalski II.
Six respondents of record. Five filed Statewide Grievance Committee complaints, currently pending. Click each card to open the filed Statement of Complaint.
Partner · Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C.
Statewide Grievance Committee · Filed ↗ Supplement w/ MillerAssociate · Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C.
Statewide Grievance Committee · Filed ↗ Supplement w/ BlombergPartner · Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C.
Statewide Grievance Committee · Filed ↗ GAL Pattern (8 counts)Named Partner · Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C.
Statewide Grievance Committee · Filed ↗ RPC 5.1 / 5.3 / 8.4(a)Of Counsel · Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C.
Statewide Grievance Committee · Filed ↗ RPC 1.7 / 3.3 / 7.1 / 5.1 / 8.4Associate · Schoonmaker, George, Blomberg, Bryniczka & Welsh, P.C.
Statewide Grievance Committee · Filed ↗ Dual-Role / CGS § 51-85The marketing-video admission did not appear in a vacuum. The firm's relationship with the Connecticut family-court bench is documented in four parallel records.
Four generations of Schoonmaker partners plus Welsh and Miller have held officer positions in the Connecticut Bar Association Family Law Section — the body that consults on the very Practice Book rules under which the cases are tried.
On 3/29/2022, at CBA program EWL220329 ("Jennifer's Law: Its Impact on ROs, Divorces, and Family Law Cases"), Attorney Welsh personally introduced Hon. Leo V. Diana. Twelve months later Diana was elevated to Chief Administrative Judge of Family Matters.
Attorney Welsh has been court-appointed Guardian Ad Litem on multiple Diana-managed dockets, including FST-FA17-6031564-S and FST-FA22-5026729 — appointments that flow directly from the bench his firm helped shape.
Across the documented SGB-roster caseload, the docket-sealing rate runs ~28% — materially above peer-state norms in the documentary record assembled to date.
The closest publicly-documented analog to the bench-bar capture pattern alleged here — included as comparator, not accusation.
Lead opposing counsel Jill Heitler Blomberg is the third generation of a New York trial-court judicial family. Her mother, the Hon. Sherry Klein Heitler, served on the New York State Supreme Court (NY's trial court of general jurisdiction) from 1994–2020 and as Coordinating Justice of the New York City Asbestos Litigation (NYCAL) docket from 2008–2015.
During Justice Heitler's NYCAL tenure, the plaintiffs' firm Weitz & Luxenberg captured more than 50% of the docket and approximately 87% of mesothelioma verdict dollars (per Legal Newsline reporting). In April 2014, Justice Heitler reversed a 20-year ban on punitive damages in NYCAL trials, on motion by Weitz & Luxenberg. In March 2015 she was removed from the NYCAL docket amid documented criticism that the docket had been "rigged" — two months after NY Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was indicted for a $3.2 million kickback scheme involving Weitz & Luxenberg, for which he was twice convicted (2015, 2018).
The structural pattern — favored plaintiffs-side firm, statistical docket capture, reversed prior policy, appellate-level concerns, reassignment — is analogically illuminating. Justice Heitler was not criminally charged. No finding of judicial misconduct issued against her. No Soros / OSF funding tie to the Heitler family has been documented.
Every cited document is linked. Open inline. No download required. Every PDF carries a SHA-256 attestation in its footer.
Every submission is read by the principal personally. If you are still in active litigation, do not include privileged information from your current counsel. If you are pro se, include whatever you would put in a sworn affidavit.
sgbclassaction.com began as a single pro se defendant's litigation-research file. It is now the public-record archive of what one Connecticut matrimonial-law firm built across four generations — and what the people on the other side of that firm's cases were never told.
Our work is grounded in longevity. The firm we document has worked together for almost a hundred years. We have read every year of it. We have read the Continuing Legal Education programs at which their partners introduced the judges who would later sign their scheduling orders. We have read the Guardian Ad Litem appointments their partners received from those same judges. We have read the marketing video in which a firm representative — speaking on the firm's own approved channel — names "the judges" in the same breath as "financial experts, forensic accountants, business evaluators, therapists, mediators," and tells prospective clients that those relationships produce "the best possible outcome in their case."
We approach every case with a team. The team is the public record: the Connecticut Judicial Branch docket portal, the Connecticut Bar Association's own CLE archive, the firm's own published video, the Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee, the Federal Election Commission, and the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Each citation is footnoted. Each document carries a SHA-256 chain-of-custody hash.
A client is not just a number. The class of former SGB-adverse parties, pro se survivors, and structurally-disadvantaged family-court litigants is not just a class. They are humans. They are people. They are the record this site exists to preserve.