FRONT PAGE
Lowly Islanders stun Rangers, 4-2, 1C
Friday, Dec., 24, 1999
THE JOURNAL NEWS
A Gannet Newspaper for Westchester County
Developer can sue protesters, judge rules (uncapitalized)
Dobbs Ferry townhouse opponents can march, but face libel claims
Alicia Makey
The Journal News
White Plains - One week after deciding a citizens group has the
constitutional right to protest a townhouse development, a state Supreme
Court justice has ruled the developer can pursue its lawsuit that claims the
group is making false statements intended to ruin business.
Summit Residential, a company owned by developer Louis Cappelli, wants
the Friends of Wickers Creek Archaeological Site to stop carrying
inflammatory signs outside the Dobbs Ferry construction site. According to
court papers, the signs say: "Toxic Townhome." "Beware of 'Landing' on Toxic
Landfill." "The Landing Desecrated Gravesites" and "Do You Want These
Chemicals In Your Backyard?"
Justice Orazio Bellatoni ruled Tuesday that the Valhalla-based company's
complaint "does state valid causes of action for a permanent injunction, ...
interference with prospective advantage, libel and slander."
Lawyer Philip Halpern of Pirro, Collier, Cohen, & Halpern in White
Plains said the ruling did not stop protests against his client.
"That doesn't get the protesters to stop making false statements with an
intent to injure Summit's business, yet," Halpern said yesterday. "However,
it does pave the way for full discovery and trial on the merits."
Both sides will return to court Jan. 20.
Friends of the Wickers Creek and its lawyers, Kevin Goering of Coudert
Brothers in Manhattan and Assemblyman Richard
Please see LANDING, 2A
Judge rules developer can sue protesters
LANDING, from 1A
Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, have labeled the lawsuit a SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit
against public participation. The group is seeking monetary damages from
Summit "for bringing a baseless complaint that infringes our client's
fundamental First Amendment right of free speech, " Goering said.
Tuesday's decision simply means the judge wants more information,
Brodsky said, and, "we're in this to the Supreme Court."
Marge Schneider, a Summit Residential partner, said the lawsuit was
neither a SLAPP nor a First Amendment issue.
"I have no problem with picketers. I have a problem with them making
intentionally false and slanderous comments that hurt our business,"
Schneider said.
The $50 million project for 104 townhouses between Route 9 and the
Hudson River near Wickers Creek, an archaeological site where numerous
Weckquaesgecks Indian artifacts were recovered, is moving forward. The
infrastructure -- roads and utilities -- is being completed. The sale office
is open, and the frame of two buildings that will serve as models should open
in late February or early March.
-30-
As the one who personally picked out the 10 or twelve carbon samples for 14C
dating out of a possible 30, because the former developer wouldn't pay
according to Greenhouse's Consultants, the fact that this site, which dated
to over five millennia, seems never to be at issue, over the last twelve
years. I, who analyzed the site, in that I did the Harris matrices and 3D
strata reconstruction (photocopy profiles, cut out manilla folders after
gluing profiles on, reconstruct site stratigraphy in your own "fence"
diagram, watch others crush it, all sorts of useful purposes for
archaeologists and psychologists alike) and artifact statistical analyses on
my Quattro loaded PCjr and who also ran excavating machinery on the site have
never been called by anyone once this "job" was finished, a new "Wickers
Creek" ceramic type defined (cord-like decorations) and approval granted by
the state of NY, even though it was not their "bailiwick."
George J. Myers, Jr., BA
Still willing to discuss Wickers Creek Site, former Jay Gould Estate, left to
the Sisters of Mercy, abutting Mercy College, who really wanted the site, but
profit prevailed.
|
