Sullivan approves $75,000 in additional legal fees; Cost of Bloomingburg vote litigation expected to soar

Posted 8/21/12

MONTICELLO, NY — A number of lawsuits regarding voting in the Village of Bloomingburg have been sparked with the creation of the development called Villages at Chestnut Ridge, being marketed to the …

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Sullivan approves $75,000 in additional legal fees; Cost of Bloomingburg vote litigation expected to soar

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MONTICELLO, NY — A number of lawsuits regarding voting in the Village of Bloomingburg have been sparked with the creation of the development called Villages at Chestnut Ridge, being marketed to the Hasidic community.

One of the lawsuits was brought in federal court by developer Shalom Lamm against the Sullivan County Board of Elections, saying there was misconduct in one or more of the elections in which he was involved.

As one of the last acts of the outgoing Sullivan County Legislature, lawmakers considered a request from the county attorney’s office to spend up to $75,000 in legal fees for outside law firms.

Legislator Kitty Vetter expressed concern that the original limit was set at $50,000, and “now we’re upping that fee.”

Sam Yasgur, the county attorney, responded saying, “and probably upping it again, very candidly. This developed in a very short period of time; it was the court’s direction.” He said a massive search was performed and turned up more than 50,000 documents.

He said, “When you’ve got 50,000 documents that must be gone through by hand to determine whether they have any privileged or confidential information, that would permit the county to withhold them… we simply do not have the kind of resources to do that within… the 10-day to two-week timeframe” that was ordered by the federal court.

The documents were given to a firm that specializes in handling large numbers of documents.

Yasgur further explained, “I find it, in some respects, as offensive as everybody at this table does to spend that kind of money, but I have no control over that. When we’re engaged in a federal lawsuit, and the plaintiffs take advantage, which they have every right to do, of electronic discovery, which is what happened here, and when a federal judge sets an extremely tight time limit, we have no choice. If we don’t comply, we’ll be in real trouble.”

Asked if it wouldn’t be cheaper to pay damages and settle the lawsuit, Yasgur replied that this is not a “payment lawsuit.” He said, “This is a lawsuit claiming the county engaged in improper practices with regards to an election in Bloomingburg,” and it has to defend it.

He said the cost of the lawsuit is likely to go much higher than the $75,000 he was requesting now, but if he tried to estimate the cost he would be misleading the legislature because there was no way for him to know what the final cost might be.

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