Judge finds vaccine mandate illegitimate and orders restitution against the city

#BREAKING Judge Rules Vaccine Mandate INVALID for NYC PBA Members pic.twitter.com/JrSlJAcJWa

— NYC PBA (@NYCPBA) September 23, 2022

Hold the lines

 

Queens Chronicle

A New York State judge struck down the recently agreed upon legislative maps Thursday afternoon, sending state lawmakers back to the drawing board. They have until April 11 to agree upon new maps, the ruling says; the previously approved maps are not to be used in the upcoming election cycle. 

This comes hours after legislators left Albany for the weekend, doing so without the state budget — which expires at midnight — approved. 

The maps just nixed by Acting Supreme Court Justice Patrick McAllister of Steuban County were the culmination of a drawn-out redistricting process following the 2020 Census. For the first time in its history, the state had given an Independent Redistricting Committee the task of drawing the lines; when the committee failed to reach an agreement, at the end of January, the Democrat-controlled Legislature took up the mantle as it had in years past.

The ruling includes the proposed maps for New York’s congressional, state Senate and Assembly districts.

Soon after that, Republicans filed a lawsuit challenging the lines, as many anticipated. Asked about a possible challenge at the time, state Sen. Mike Gianaris (D-Astoria), who has been on the front lines of the redistricting fight, told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, “When the time comes, we’re confident we’ll make our case to the court and be successful.”

The NYC Open Restaurants Clustershanty Of Koreatown

Impunity City

 It wasn’t much long ago when yours truly did a expansive on the street eyewitness story about the much ballyhooed NYC Open Restaurants program (albeit ballyhooed by our feckless and bought elected officials in NYC Council, former mayor Bill de Blasio and current Mayor Eric Adams) and what an actual clusterfuck it was and making a case out it shouldn’t exist anymore. Now thanks to a judge’s recent decision to order the city to make a thorough environmental review of the restaurant shanties all over the five boroughs, it has thankfully put a pounding kibosh on the City Council Cronies plan to make these unsafe, blighted, filthy, ugly and traffic congesting eyesores a permanent part of the street infrastructure which the restaurants have been using for free for the last two years.

 

But before the Council Cronies begin their study, I would like to present exhibit A on why every public space these restaurants has usurped must cease to exist and that’s the massive triple cluster shanty on the southwest corner of 32nd St. and 5th Ave, just two blocks away from the Empire State Building.

This is truly the tipping point of public space misuse and the heinous blight that has befouled the streets in the last year, which continues unencumbered because of the willful obliviousness of elected officials and the persistent bickering demands of the hospitality industrial complex lobby, represented by some neoliberal runt named Andrew Rigie.

Behold.

 

 

 

Impunity City 

de Blasio autocratically defies judge's stop work order for East River Park

 Village Sun

On Wednesday morning, opponents fighting the East Side Coastal Resiliency project cheered as their attorney obtained a stay blocking further work on the contentious project.

The day before, though, park activists had watched in horror as workers either cut or “dismembered” 13 trees in East River Park, felling some completely while shearing the branches off others, leaving them ghostly, ruined trunks.

Early Wednesday morning, the workers were right back at it, lopping the branches off of six-more adult trees, a combination of London planes and locust trees, that the Parks Department has likely earmarked to be made into planks for park benches.

But around 9:30 a.m., Judge Rowan D. Wilson of the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, granted a stay on the lifting of a restraining order against the work by the Appellate Division, First Department, from Nov. 30, when the lower court had ruled against a community lawsuit against the project.

Village Sun 

 To park activists’ horror, workers began cutting down trees in East River Park again early Friday morning, just two days after the Court of Appeals had seemingly issued a stay to stop the destruction.

About five hours later, at 11:30 a.m., protesters clashed with police at the new fence blocking off the work zone in a wild video posted to Twitter. Police are seen trying to close the gate while shoving away a swarm of protesters.

Around 8:30 a.m. an incredulous Tommy Loeb, a member of East River Park ACTION, who could see the destruction playing out from his windows, fumed, “They’re in contempt of court!”

Kathryn Freed, a former judge who is a co-counsel on the community lawsuit against the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, said Mayor de Blasio’s Law Department unilaterally decided there is no stay in effect to stop them from destroying the park.

Basically, as she explained it, the Court of Appeals itself cannot issue a stay, although, this Wednesday, it did stay the actual previous decision from Nov. 30 by the Appellate Division (a lower court) against the community lawsuit.

Friday morning, Freed and her co-counsel Arthur Schwartz, who are doing the case pro bono, were scrambling to have the Appellate Division clarify that its Nov. 30 decision against the lawsuit has been stayed by the Court of Appeals — which would mean a temporary restraining order (T.R.O.) that the Appellate Division had issued while it considered the case should still be in effect, the attorneys argue. Freed said they hoped to be in court at 9:30, virtually, to get a clarification.

She said a city attorney had called Schwartz at 6 p.m. the previous day to say the workers would be restarting the tree-cutting.

While the legal technicalities are confusing, the reality of trees being cut in the park once again on Friday was starkly clear.

Yes I know "it's not a Queens story", but this is a dangerous precedent the Blaz is setting here. Imagine if Eric Adams can cite what's going here to do something to Forest Park, Flushing Meadows or your local playground. Hell just imagine if Adams can do anything on a whim in spite of a court order.

 

You can't park here!

From Brooklyn Daily:

A group of Canarsie homeowners has secured a court order authorizing them to call in tow companies to haul away cars that illegally park on the narrow, private roadway that runs behind their houses, where scofflaws routinely block their rear driveways and can even deny access to emergency vehicles.

The private road runs behind houses on E. 78th and E. 79th streets between Flatlands Avenue and Paerdegat First Street. It’s a tight pathway, owned by the individual homeowners rather than the city, and the homes’ driveways are located there. Parking on the road rather than in the driveways can easily block the way for wider vehicles and sometimes prevent homeowners from being able to turn out of their driveways.

The 78–79 Street Block Association, which represents the homeowners forbids parking on the private street, but outsiders and even some residents often ignore the rule, which is why the association went to court to get permission to tow.

The association asked the Kings County Supreme Court for an injunction against cars parking along the road in March, being represented by the law firm Novick, Edelstein, Lubell, Reisman, Wasserman & Leventhal, P.C. On May 10, a justice ordered that cars, including those belonging to residents, cannot park there and thus blo ck the “right-of-way easement.” Members of the association are now authorized to call a private towing company to remove any delinquent cars parked there, according to court documents.

Because the road is private, it is not the city’s responsibility to arrange for towing, but rather that of the homeowners, but they wanted a court document stating their rights to have illegally parked cars towed at the owners’ expense because some of the towing companies have refused in the past.

City ordered to turn over Maspeth shelter's RFP documents

From the Queens Chronicle:

The city is not planning to appeal a court ruling ordering it to turn over documents related to last year’s highly controversial planned conversion of the Maspeth Holiday Inn Express into a homeless shelter.

The Sept. 27 ruling, made by Justice Allan Weiss of Queens Supreme Court, stems from an Article 78 case brought against the city earlier this year by the civic Citizens for a Better Maspeth.

Under court order, the Department of Homeless Services must provide CBM with the city’s original request for proposals and the response documents from applying companies as it related to the proposed operation the 59-40 55 Road hotel as a shelter.

“It is ordered and adjudged that the petition is granted solely to the extent that respondents are directed to provide petitioner with copies of the Request For Proposals that were received in connection with the proposal to convert the subject Holiday Inn Express to a homeless shelter,” Weiss’ ruling reads, “and any and all plans submitted along with the RFPs which demonstrate that the space would be a conforming use under the zoning resolution.”

Zoning law only permits hotel stays of 30 days or less in manufacturing zones — the Holiday Inn Express is located in an M1-1 zone — and CBM alleges that homeless men have been staying at Patel’s building for months at a time.

Brown's use of witness warrants comes under fire

From the NY Times:

It is one of law enforcement’s most expansive powers: If the authorities believe that someone has knowledge of a crime, they can — under threat of arrest — force the person to testify in court by obtaining what is known as a material witness warrant.

Unlike normal subpoenas, many, if not most, of which are issued to those directly involved in criminal proceedings, material witness warrants are typically handed out to people who are not under suspicion and are merely in possession of information that the police or prosecutors want.

While the warrants are ostensibly meant to seek the truth and quicken the search for justice, court papers recently filed in a federal lawsuit claim that the Queens district attorney’s office misused a warrant while pursuing a prosecution — a practice that, according to the papers, prosecutors in both Brooklyn and Manhattan have also engaged in occasionally in the last several years.

A sort of legal fail-safe, material witness warrants, which must be signed by judges, are designed to be used in extraordinary circumstances — say, when prosecutors are concerned that a witness might flee or resists taking the stand. Strict rules govern their use: material witnesses can be arrested on a warrant only if they first ignore an order to appear in court, and those detained are required to be presented to a judge and provided with a lawyer. Hearings are supposed to be held to determine what these witnesses know and why they are reluctant to reveal it.

But the court papers say that does not always happen and that the mishandling of the warrants has led to dire consequences for the witnesses themselves, some of whom have been unlawfully held in custody for having done no more than attracted the attention of investigators. The court papers also claim that the misuse of the warrants has harmed defendants, as witnesses compelled by them to testify have at times been coerced into offering false accounts in court.

Our Lady of Loreto is in court

From AM-NY:

It has arrived in the form of a showdown between a faith-based group determined to level a 109-year-old church to erect affordable housing and residents who want to preserve their neighborhood’s patrimony while providing a hub for Brownsville culture.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Bernard Graham issued a temporary stop to the demolition of the magnificent, albeit deteriorating, Our Lady of Loreto Roman Catholic church on April 26.

A final decision on the historic architectural gem is expected to be handed down on May 9.

Catholic Charities Progress of Peoples Development Corporation (CCPOP), which leases the site from the Diocese of Brooklyn, wants to demolish the 1908 Italian Renaissance church at Sackman and Pacific streets to erect an unknown number of “energy-efficient units for low-income families” in a city where almost 60,000 people are homeless.

Members of the Brownsville Cultural Coalition and others long to landmark the church, which was closed to parishioners around 2008, and repurpose the shrine built by an all-Italian team of craftsmen into a cultural center for residents woefully short in community spaces for the arts.

Housing is important, said Miriam Robertson, executive director of the Brownsville Cultural Coalition, but Brownsville also needs to honor and preserve an important and elegant monument to its immigrant roots and history.

The pro se lawsuit that resulted in the current stay of demolition charges that multiple defendants failed to abide by a 2010 “letter of resolution” concerning the property. The letter of resolution stipulates “the Church itself shall not be demolished, reconstructed or damaged,” and was signed by the then CCPOP CEO and other parties. The church, said the resolution, “is not on the portion of the site of the modified project” slated for homes.

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, said a commission spokeswoman, “has carefully reviewed this building several times over the past few years and each time determined not to advance it for further consideration due to a lack of support from critical community stakeholders, including the Council member,” for the district, Rafael Espinal.

Brooklyn folks get court order to stop shelter

From NY1:

The halls of Brooklyn Supreme Court were crowded on Tuesday.

Crown Heights residents were there to plea their case in front of a judge, hoping she would continue to block the opening of a men's homeless shelter in their neighborhood.

The judge agreed. She blocked the opening of the shelter at least temporarily. She is not likely to revisit the decision for 10 days.

At issue is whether the neighborhood has its fair share of these facilities.

The city was supposed to open the shelter last week. It is slated to house 104 single men over the age of 62.

Residents oppose the facility because they say their community is already oversaturated with homeless shelters. They argue the city did not do the proper review before it picked the site and prepared it to open.

Bolstering their argument, in court on Tuesday, officials revealed the city had just finished this formal analysis the day before. In it, the city examines all of the facilities in the surrounding community.

According to this analysis, there are six facilities within a half mile of the new site, including a shelter for singles, for adult families and four facilities for families with children.

Judge orders de Blasio to comply with ethics probe

From the NY Times:

A judge in Albany has ordered Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political nonprofit to comply with a subpoena from a state ethics panel, putting a damper on the mayor’s widening effort to prevent the disclosure of certain communications that he deems privileged.

The decision by Justice Denise A. Hartman of State Supreme Court involved an investigation by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics into whether the nonprofit, the Campaign for One New York, violated state regulations by failing to register in 2015 as a lobbyist.

The two parties argued their positions in court in July, the first public court battle to emerge from various state and federal investigations into the mayor’s fund-raising and political activities.

The ruling, issued last week but not received by the parties until Monday, comes as Mr. de Blasio is also fighting in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to keep emails and text messages between City Hall and a small number of outside advisers — some of whom played central roles in the political nonprofit before it closed down this year — from being disclosed to reporters.

Strip club shut down

From the Daily News:

The Show Palace, an “all nude” strip club in Long Island City, Queens, was shuttered by court order Friday after investigators learned that servers were selling both marijuana and cocaine along with non-alcoholic drinks and lap dances, officials said.

The NYPD Narcotics Bureau conducted a number of investigations at the Show Palace, according to officials. A week before it was closed, a shooting took place outside the club, a police source said.

“Waitresses were selling drugs to customers,” the source said.

What will Bill do at Flushing-Meadows?

From the NY Times:

The court’s decision brings a halt — at least temporarily — to what has seemed like the relentless commercial appropriation of public land in New York City, often under the rationale that private profit is the only way the people can have nice things.

It also puts Mayor Bill de Blasio in a tough spot.

Will Mr. de Blasio join the developers’ intended appeal and ally himself publicly with a Bloomberg administration initiative that has been deemed an illegal giveaway of parkland?

Or will he disavow the mall, even though supporters say it is financially critical to the overall rebirth of the Willets Point neighborhood, including the possible construction of 875 units of affordable housing?

Illegal hotelier ignored court order to stop

New Yorker Renting Out 2-bedroom Apartment with... by Gothamist
From the Daily News:

Your home is not a hotel — unless you’re former club promoter David Jaffee, in which case court papers say five of your homes are hotels.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement says Jaffee is a repeat offender in the illegal business of running cheap hotels out of Manhattan apartments.

The unit has filed court papers asking permission to search a two-bedroom apartment at 116 John St. which, it says, has been renting “bunk beds” to tourists through www.booking.com for $42 per night.

Jaffee rented the 14th floor apartment in October 2014 for $4,350 per month. The two-year lease, which is attached to the city’s court papers, clearly states that subletting is forbidden.

However, the managers of the building, Metro Loft Management and 116 John St. Subtenant LLC, say Jaffee almost immediately started renting beds in the unit for short-term stays, billing the apartment online as a “Financial District Hotel John Street.”

David Lepard, a lawyer with the OSE, says in an affidavit that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten signed an order on April 2 barring Jaffee from continuing to sublet the apartment, but building managers told city officials that Jaffee has ignored Wooten's order.

Waiting until the cows come home?

From COMET:

Received a call from Carolina Gill at Assembly Member Marge Markey's office to let me know they have been receiving complaints of youth hanging out at the abandoned house at 52-29 84th Street and had followed up with the Department of Buildings.

Carolina said that she was informed by the Department of Buildings that a court order to seal the building was approved on March 26th. On March 27th, the order was forwarded to Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) who now has to hire a contractor to do the work.

We also heard from Michael Mallon at Council Member Dromm's office to say that he also followed up. I asked him to try and find out how long it will take to hire a contractor. Hopefully it doesn't take several months.

Judge grants 5 Pointz a restraining order

From LIC Post:

The demolition crew tasked with the job of bulldozing 5 Pointz is going to have to wait–as the 5 Pointz artists were able to convince a Federal Court Judge today to grant them a temporary restraining order, which prohibits the developer from tampering with the building.

The decision follows a lawsuit filed by 17 artists last week against G&M Realty (the owner of the property), which argues that the building cannot be destroyed since it would undermine the plaintiffs’ artwork as defined by the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act.

The lawsuit claims that many pieces of work are recognized throughout the country and the destruction of the artwork would damage the artists.

The District Court judge’s decision to grant a 10-day restraining order was deemed by the plaintiffs as the first step toward getting a permanent injunction.

The plaintiffs hope the judge will come back before October 28 and announce a hearing for a preliminary injunction. At that point, the artists would be called upon to testify.

Jeannine Chanes, the attorney for the artists, said that the artwork should be protected since it was completed post 1990 (when the Act was introduced), is highly acclaimed, and was done with the permission of a property owner. Therefore, she said, the artwork cannot be altered without each artist’s consent.

Taxpayers on legal hook for Bloomberg's folly

Eminent domain legal fee reimbursement decision by unitedtriangle

From Willets Point United:

New York State Supreme Court judge Jaime A. Rios has denied a motion made by the city to dismiss the claim of Willets Point United Inc. ("WPU") seeking reimbursement of legal and expert fees incurred by WPU when defending against the city's failed attempt to use eminent domain to forcibly acquire our properties.

The decision means that WPU's claim against the city in the amount of $1,102,035.41 is valid, and will proceed in court. We are confident that the city will have to pay the fees that we are entitled to recover – adding to the already exorbitant amount of city funds being spent to pursue the proposed Willets Point development.

Way to go, EDC!

Squatters evicted from church

From WPIX:

A Queens church has evicted two women who were offered a temporary place to stay but never left.

Judy and Mary, who asked us not to use their last names, were offered a room in the basement of the Queensboro Hill Community Church in 2011. The pair had been roommates for years but were recently evicted from their apartment after Mary lost her job.

Church leaders said they felt for the women but after six months, they felt taken advantage of. They could no longer use the stage for performances and the women would use the heat in the winter. To make matters worse, anytime the Pastor would ask them to leave, they would makes excuses as to why they could not.

Last Friday, a court ordered the women be out. They promised PIX 11 they would be. But today, the women were still at the church and a city marshal arrived and evicted them.

5-year old illegal sent home to mom

From the Daily News:

Angelica Mota filed suit last year seeking custody of little Elena under the Child Abduction Remedies Act of the Hague Convention.

The child was born in 2006 to Mota and her husband Jose Luis Rivera Castillo who later entered the U.S. illegally and settled in Queens where he works as a custodian at a private school.

The couple hatched a plan for Mota and their daughter to join him in Corona, Queens in 2010 - she handed Elena off to smugglers that he had paid in advance at the border in Nogales, Arizona.

Several days later Mota was nabbed by the feds when she tried to cross with another relative and was deported in August 2010, according to court papers.

Castillo was raising the child with his new girlfriend with whom he recently had a baby boy, and had stopped sending financial support to his wife.

Castillo's lawyer argued that the couple had made a joint decision that Elena should be raised in the U.S. because it would be a better life for her.

But the judge ruled that Mota had proved her case that the child's removal to a new country was conditional upon her mother joining her.

Bill would give inspectors easier access to buildings

From the Brooklyn Eagle:

A new City Council bill would allow the Buildings Department to seek court orders that would compel building owners and managers to let inspectors enter buildings suspected of having hazardous conditions and committing serious violations.

This bill has now received the support of Community Board 10, serving Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.

While the committee supports the bill’s concept, [Ann] Falutico said, the bill as written is flawed and needs clarification. She said it particularly needs specific and much clearer definitions of “immediately hazardous” conditions and “major violations.”

“We do not want inspectors entering homes for any willy-nilly reason, and there must be consistency,” said Falutico. “If the law does not pass constitutional muster for the issuance of warrants, it will quickly become irrelevant. We want this law to work.”

The bill also does not address urgent emergency situations that require immediate inspections without a court order, such as a complaint about a propane heater being used, she added. “Two visits, one mailing, and 10 days for [an] application for and [an] execution of a court order may be a wee bit too long to prevent an impending explosion. A rapid response is necessary.”

The bill requires the DOB, upon getting a complaint, to send an inspector. If twice refused entry, the owner gets certified mail requesting the inspection and a date for it. Without a reply within 10 days, and if the commissioner considers the situation to be of imminent danger or a major violation, the commissioner is required to seek a court order to enter the building.