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January 6, 2009
The Year in Review by the Daily Bulletin
The top legal, judicial and courthouse news stories of 2008
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
By Ryan Thompson
For you legal eagles, we've excerpted the Atlantic Yards courtside action from the Brooklyn Eagle's year in review:
JANUARY
• Atlantic Yards lawsuits continue to be dismissed in both state and federal courts. Many still pending.FEBRUARY
• Another Atlantic Yards lawsuit is dismissed.MAY
• Atlantic Yards opponents file another lawsuit, claiming the project is delayed too long. New York Court of Appeals refuses to hear one of the Atlantic Yards lawsuits.SEPTEMBER
• Atlantic Yards cases and appeals continue.
Not very informative, we agree. Since we pretty much have no freakin' idea what the Eagle was trying to say, we had to look up these excerpts in Norman Oder's Atlantic Yards Report year in review:
JANUARY
State Court Justice Joan Madden takes eight months to rule against a community challenge to the Atlantic Yards environmental review. She punts on the crime statistics and thus doesn't fully assess the issue of blight.
A Forest City Ratner official admits the legal battle over Atlantic Yards cast doubt on the developer's ability to get arena financing and requests that the appeal in the case challenging the AY environmental review to be heard in May rather than September. The request is not granted.
FEBRUARY
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously upholds Judge Nicholas Garaufis’s dismissal of the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case and suggests (correctly, it turned out) that a U.S. Supreme Court appeal would be tough to mount.
MAY
The ESDC's 10-year project "is a public relations and marketing scheme; it does not exist in a legally enforceable form," argues George Locker, a lawyer for residents of two buildings in the AY footprint. The ESDC objects to "purported quotations" about the timetable from Bruce Ratner in the New York Times and instead points to Ratner's Daily News op-ed.
JUNE
The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear an appeal of the federal eminent domain suit, setting up for a longshot state court challenge. (There's an interesting fib in the ESDC's brief.)
AUGUST
The Atlantic Yards eminent domain case is filed in state court and, though most of the arguments have already been dismissed in the (likely) more hospitable federal court system, the new case adds a novel claim.
SEPTEMBER
In the appeal of the case challenging the AY environmental review, two of five justices seem skeptical of state’s blight claim, but questions in court do not predict a final ruling.
Posted by lumi at January 6, 2009 4:29 AM