Unhand Piermont!: September 2024

Please see the below “.jpeg” of the new Lyons letter just posted to the court website in the Piermont litigation before Justice Harold Greenwald in New City.

This is getting ridiculous.

Apparently, it is now the newly-adopted strategy of Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker and the “Village Defendants” to harass Justice Greenwald no less than once per day with the inane water-drip torture of useless and senseless correspondence - in a continuing effort to obstruct and prevent the Judge, the Judge’s Part Clerk, and the Judge’s Law Secretary from editing, finalizing, and issuing the written opinion and decision commemorating the Judge’s Tuesday bench ruling in favor of the aggrieved Piermont village residents.

Thankfully, Justice Greenwald has some powerful remedies for that which the “Village Defendants” don’t.

And this would be a lot funnier if the Piermont residents weren’t paying for it. Which they are. You can thank your Garmento Mayor for that.

So this past Tuesday, September 24, 2024, some form of conference was held before the Court in New City in the Piermont litigation regarding the wrongful CBM Zone and, by transitivity, the awful 447-477 Piermont Avenue overdevelopment:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-to-access-court-file.html
Troubling, was the fact that few residents were given any prior notice of Tuesday’s conference. There was nothing in the news sources about it. Nothing was posted to the court website in advance, alerting us to the Tuesday conference, either. Moreover, no one present at the conference posted any timely wrap-up of what went on.

When I phoned the Court Wednesday morning to check status of the case, this is what I was told, and I posted this message to all relevant Piermont Facebook pages:

“The Court confirmed to me by telephone this morning that Justice Greenwald issued a bench decision to the parties yesterday in this case, and that the decision, already and currently written in draft form, shall be posted to the court file website shortly”.

Apparently, people then read my posted message. Some reached out to me directly about it. Yet the best proof of readership was the Desmond Lyons letter posted to the court website by dinnertime that same Wednesday evening. Desmond Lyons is the attorney at the Lyons McGovern firm representing the bad-guy “Village Defendants”.

Hey. Someone has to, right?

In all likelihood the issuance of the rushed Lyons letter re-printed below, was instigated by Piermont Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker after reading one of my many identical Facebook posts. At minimum, the Lyons letter should have been approved for issuance by Garmento Mayor Tucker in advance.

The Lyons letter - meaning, the Tucker letter - read like this:

But WAIT a minute.

"... The Village is continuing to explore options..."?

"... In light of our ongoing efforts..."?

"... additional time to reach a resolution of this matter..."?

"... schedule a further conference..."?

Those statements make it sound like settlement discussions were continuing. Yet I was told that same morning by the Court that Justice Greenwald was about to rule in writing. The Lyons letter didn't check out.

So, I immediately posted the Lyons letter to all relevant Piermont Facebook pages yesterday evening, with this accompanying comment:

“This document was just uploaded to the court website in the Piermont litigation. Looks like the ‘Village Defendants’ are trying to pre-empt or forestall the issuance of Justice Greenwald's written decision emanating from Tuesday’s hearing. Perhaps that is because the ‘Village Defendants’ are afraid of that decision and its consequences.”

Turns out that I was right. Turns out that Thursday, Garmento Mayor Bruce Tucker and his merry band of "Village Defendants" really stepped in it with that Lyons letter.

Here is good-guy attorney Brian Condon’s response to the Lyons letter, posted to the court website this morning. Condon represents the aggrieved Piermont residents:

My comment to the Condon response read as follows:

“Piermont residents should be very grateful to Attorney Brian Condon for responding so quickly. (Please see below). It is now apparent that on Tuesday, Justice Greenwald indicated from the bench that he intended to rule in favor of the residents and against the hapless village government. It is therefore now clear what an outrageous and misguided stunt the "Village Defendants" tried to pull on the Court, and on YOU, when they filed their antecedent yesterday letter with the Court, subsequently blogged yesterday... The fact that the ‘Village Defendants’ panicked about a ruling about to go against them, is no defense. This is not a game. This is for real."

So imagine, for a moment, that you are a venerable New York State Supreme Court Justice reading what Bruce Tucker and the "Village Defendants" tried to do with the Lyons letter yesterday.

How would YOU react?

Thursday, the Mayor stepped in it. But why not? Once Tucker's counsel reported back to him on Justice Greenwald's bench ruling Tuesday, Tucker already knew that he was the loser. He probably thought, "What more does a loser have to lose?"