January 25, 2010
On January 13, 2010, the Fire Place History Club of Brookhaven hamlet, NY, received a response to their lawsuit against the Town of Brookhaven forcing the Town to maintain the historic cemeteries in Brookhaven and South Haven Hamlets, as required by New York State law. The efforts of the Fire Place History Club are documented elsewhere in this blog, and are further documented at the BrookhavenSouthHaven.org cemetery pages.
Immediately on receiving the Town's response, a subcommittee of the Fire Place History Club was formed to prepare a response. Dr. Richard A. Thomas, a retired physicist, took on the task of researching the specific objections in point of law raised by the Town of Brookhaven. He spent several days on this research and prepared a paper for our attorney, Regina Seltzer. After reviewing his research, she decided that it was appropriate to ask for a summary judgment in favor the Fire Place History "on the grounds that Brookhaven Town violated its lawful Town duties as explicitly set forth in Cemeteries Town Law Section 291 and that respondents have raised no triable issue of fact a summary determination is appropriate based on the pleadings, papers and admissions ...." She further concluded that the Town's answer, denying knowledge or information as to allegations in our original filing and objections in point of law "are shameful, blatantly false fabrications, without any basis in fact, intended to mislead the Court."
The subcommittee—Marty Van Lith, Richard Thomas, and John Deitz then met with Regina Seltzer for over four hours on Sunday afternoon, drafting the reply to the Town's specific contentions. This document was then filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York at Central Islip on Monday, January 25, 2010.
The argument section of this filing is found in the first link. This version, a pdf file, is identical to the court filing except that a few typographical errors have been corrected. Since it is based on the original word processing document, it is considerable smaller than the scanned versions. The second (11 MB), third (12 MB), and fourth (7 MB) links are scanned pdf versions of the actual documents, including affidavits and exhibits, as filed with the court.
Actual scanned documents included in the 25 January 2010 filing:
2- Arguments and Affidavits 3- Exhibits 4-Orginal Town Response
If you are having difficulty downloading these documents from this blog, please go to this page
At a luncheon meeting of the Fire Place History Club on Tuesday, January 26, 2010, Regina Seltzer discussed the suit with club members. It should be noted, Regina is doing this work pro bono. She is also a former Town of Brookhaven councilwoman.
L-R: Jeb Barry (head split), George Koch, Bob Brown, Betty Bundy, Richard Thomas, John Deitz, Diane Martens, Marty Van Lith, Regina Seltzer, Ron Kinsella, Eban Ludlow, Faith McCutcheon, and Anita Cohen
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