Rushmore hopes court will reject rescissions

A legal battle between the developers of the Rushmore and 41 condominium owners looking to get their deposits back is heating up, following the rejection of the developers’ case by the New York attorney general and a federal district court, the Wall Street Journal reported. The developers of the Rushmore, at 80 Riverside Boulevard, a partnership between Extell Development and Carlyle Realty Partners operating under the name CRP/Extell, were slated to petition the court today to review what they call Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s “arbitrary and capricious” ruling in April, when the AG ordered the return of $16 million in security deposits, according to Gary Barnett, president of Extell. The deposits equal more than $100 million in sales and would amount to one of the largest refunds ever. The case focuses on sales contracts which said that buyers would be entitled to the return of their deposits if at least one sale didn’t close by Sept. 1, 2008. The first closing didn’t occur until February 2009. The developers have said the date was intended to be Sept. 1, 2009, and that the documents contained a clerical error. Attorneys representing the buyers have argued that the contracts need to be enforced as written. [WSJ]