The former Mercedes showroom on Park Avenue in Manhattan was one of only three Frank Lloyd Wright projects built in New York City, along with the Guggenheim Museum and a Usonian house on Staten Island. “On March 22, the Landmarks Preservation Commission called the owners of 430 Park Ave. to tell them the city was considering designating the Wright showroom … as the city’s 115th interior landmark. … on March 28, the building’s owners, Midwood Investment & Management and Oestreicher Properties, reached out to another city agency, the Department of Buildings, requesting a demolition permit for the Wright showroom. The permit was approved the same day, sealing the showroom’s fate.” [Matt Chaban/Crain’s New York Business, New York Times, Metropolis] That’s only the latest in a series of incidents in which the prospect of city intervention under Gotham’s famously cumbersome preservation laws has precipitated teardown instead [New York] More thoughts: Scott Greenfield.
Posts Tagged ‘NYC’
Frequent litigant against NYC’s rich and famous
“Mr. Smith says he is simply trying to get the truth out about New York’s powerful. … But I came to believe that his intent could well be to tell fanciful stories in hopes of drawing media attention to extract settlement payments in his lawsuits.” [Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times]
Confessions given to a Brooklyn detective
“Five confessions elicited by Brooklyn detective Louis Scarcella all began with similar language: ‘You got it right’ and/or ‘I was there.'” One was that of David Ranta, released after serving 23 years after district attorneys concluded there were serious irregularities in his conviction, and another was that of Jabbar Washington, who had an alibi but was nonetheless convicted on the strength of a confession he says Scarcella forced him to sign. [New York Times and more via ABA Journal] More: Scott Greenfield was on it last month.
May 31 roundup
- The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law, new book from Yale University Press edited by Frank Buckley, looks quite promising [Bainbridge]
- So the New York Times gets spoon-fed “confidential” (and disappointingly tame) documents from the old Brady Campaign lawsuits against gunmakers, and then nothing happens;
- IRS commissioner visited White House 118 times in 2010-11. Previous one visited once in four years. Hmmm… [John Steele Gordon, more] (But see reporting by Garance Franke-Ruta and commentary by Yuval Levin.) Did politics play role in 2011 Gibson Guitar raid? [IBD]
- Supreme Court of Canada: “Judges may ‘cut and paste’ when writing their judgments” [Globe and Mail]
- Lack of proper land title and registration holds Greece back [Alex Tabarrok]
- I try not to clutter this blog with links to memoir-ish personal pieces of mine, but if you’re interested in adoption, or in how America manages to be at once the most conservative and the most socially innovative of great nations, go ahead and give this one a try [HuffPost]
- Big Lodging and hotel unions don’t like competition: New York City’s war against AirBnB and Roomorama [John Stossel, Andrew Sullivan]
N.Y.: “P.I. Lawyers Are Suspended for Encouraging Client to Lie”
“Two Fordham University law school classmates who set up a law practice together a few years after graduating are now both facing nine-month suspensions for pursuing a fraudulent personal injury case.” Daniel Levy and Shane Rios represented a woman who claimed to have slipped in front of a Yonkers church; when they investigated the sidewalks, they found no problem with the church’s, but did find a trip hazard in front of a house across the street. They advised her that she would have a winning case only against the homeowner, not the church, and she changed her story accordingly. They proceeded to conceal the original stance of the case both from the court and from a third lawyer they brought in to help. To the New York courts, this misconduct merited a suspension only of nine months. [ABA Journal, New York Law Journal]
P.S. “Maryland would have disbarred these clowns.” [@BruceGodfrey]
Labor and employment roundup
- Gov. Christie vetoes bill enabling workers and job applicants to sue employers who asked about Facebook use [NJLRA, Star-Ledger, more]
- “Shockingly a British pub might want to hire British employees,” NYC Human Rights Commission sees things differently [Amy Alkon]
- Anticlimax: despite fears, NLRB won’t ban at-will disclaimers in employee handbooks [Jon Hyman]
- “Equally injurious to the children of the laboring classes is their utilization by their parents in theatrical and operatic shows” [Kyle Graham]
- Senate confirms plaintiffs’ class action attorney as newest appointee to EEOC [Stoel Rives]
- Public accounting: “Two advances for pension transparency” [Josh Barro]
- At least there’s one category of young worker for whom job prospects remain bright, namely kids of Andrew Cuomo’s friends [David Boaz]
NYC proposes expansion of black market
“Young New Yorkers would not be able to buy cigarettes until they were 21, up from the current 18, under a proposal advanced [last month] by Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, and Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker.” [New York Times via J.D. Tuccille] Or at least would not be able to buy them legally: according to estimates from the Mackinac Institute, New York state already has the nation’s highest rate of smuggled cigarette consumption, at more than 60 percent of its total market. [Catherine Rampell, NYT; Mackinac; Tax Foundation; Christopher Snowdon, “The Wages of Sin Taxes” (CEI, PDF)]
More: As the legal drinking age has been pushed upward in recent years, the average age of first use of alcohol has fallen markedly [Tuccille]
NYC battle: can employers consider job applicants’ credit records?
Sometimes, when food choices are not involved, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is actually on the right side of controversies. One instance of that is the series of battles he’s having with the New York City Council on various bills to regulate employers. The Council recently overrode his veto of a bill creating unemployment status as a new protected class, and has pressed a paid-sick-leave bill as well. A third proposal: forbidding employers to consider job applicants’ credit records in hiring. Eight liberal-leaning states have already enacted similar measures but as the Proskauer Rose law firm explains, the NYC proposal goes further:
Unlike the vast majority of laws in effect and in legislation pending across the nation, however, the Proposal does not explicitly enumerate exceptions for managerial positions, or positions with access to bank or credit card information, Social Security numbers, significant amounts of cash, or confidential or proprietary information. Although the Proposal exempts employers required by law to run credit checks on their applicants and employees, its silence as to these other standard exceptions should give New York City employers particular pause should the Proposal become law.
New York City Gothic
Suit charges Brooklyn woman covered up aunt’s death so as to live in rent-stabilized apartment [NYPost]
Class action against NYC’s Met Museum
The cultural institution doesn’t make clear enough to visitors that its admission donation is only recommended, according to the lawyers [NY Daily News]