
The Rushmore and Gary Barnett
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a motion Friday to dismiss a last-minute lawsuit to block the return of $16 million in escrow funds at the Rushmore condominium, arguing that developers Carlyle Realty Partners and Extell Development cannot use federal courts to resolve a local dispute. The judge added that they failed to appeal the ruling in state Supreme Court, which is the normal procedure to appeal an AG ruling.
Cuomo’s office noted that lawyers for Carlyle and Extell, operating under the name CRP/Extell at the Upper West Side project, never challenged the AG’s authority to handle such matters during the 14-month investigation and never once complained about a lack of due process, during multiple face-to-face meetings with the AG’s office.
The move by CRP/Extell, wrote assistant AG Andrew Meier, who is representing Cuomo in the case, was done merely to deny the purchasers “rights of rescission and the return of their deposits to which they are entitled based upon the plain language of the plan that the plaintiff itself created and promulgated, simply because it is unhappy with the results of the process — not because the process was unfair.” [more]