War between Eliot Spitzer, Adam Leitman Bailey escalates

It’s the Steamroller vs. ALB, and things are getting personal.

Eliot Spitzer and attorney Adam Leitman Bailey are ratcheting up the stakes in a dispute over Spitzer’s plans to redevelop 985 Fifth Avenue.

Spitzer owns the building. Leitman Bailey represents the co-op next door. What began as a minor dispute over 350 square feet of land between them has escalated into an all-out war between two of the most aggressive lawyers in New York.

Leitman Bailey in January requested an order of protection against Spitzer, claiming the developer and former governor harassed and tried to intimidate the star witness in his case. Spitzer fired back this week, accusing Leitman Bailey of dishonesty and asking the court to discipline him.

“This case is a tissue of lies and perjury, generated by a law firm, Adam Leitman

Bailey, P.C., that has proven itself in this case to be a perjury factory,” Spitzer wrote in papers filed Monday. “In over 40 years as a lawyer, practicing at two pre-eminent national firms, in the Manhattan DA’s Office prosecuting top organized crime and political figures, as Attorney General, and as Governor of New York, I have never seen such wanton disregard for ethics and the truth by practicing lawyers.”

Leitman Bailey told The Real Deal that Spitzer was trying to shift attention from the merits of the case, in which the co-op claims Spitzer relinquished ownership of the 350-square-foot parcel by allowing the co-op at 980 Fifth Avenue to use it — a legal doctrine called adverse possession.

“Nowhere in Mr. Spitzer’s paper filed with the Court, does he refute — nor can he refute — that from 1989 to 1999, 980 Fifth Avenue Corporation acquired the subject plot by adverse possession,” he said. “Mr. Spitzer’s claims, made for ulterior motives, attempt to deflect from the weakness of the defendant’s case.”

Spitzer filed plans in November 2022 to tear down his luxury rental building and develop a 19-story, 26-unit condominium in its place. The co-op next door — whose Central Park views would be partially blocked by it — sued, seeking to take control of the 350-square-foot yard between them.

According to Spitzer, losing the yard, which is known as “the pit,” would add significant time and cost to his project. He sees the lawsuit as an attempt to prevent him from developing his building.

The superintendent of 980 Fifth Avenue had for years used the yard to store things like building supplies and bricks. Therefore, the co-op board claimed, Spitzer had effectively surrendered it.

In an affidavit filed by Leitman Bailey’s firm, the co-op’s superintendent said Spitzer threatened him one day in January over use of the yard.

Vlad Bogaciu said he went there to get some bricks and was confronted by Spitzer’s property manager, who had the developer on speaker phone berating him in “offensive and derogatory terms.”

“Mr. Spitzer proceeded to say words to the effect that ‘you and your fucking staff will be fucking arrested if you enter the pit,’” Bogaciu claimed in an affidavit filed a few weeks later. He said Spitzer called it “my fucking pit” and co-op board president Stephen Treadway “a fucking asshole.”

Adding a layer of intrigue, Treadway is a former fund manager whom Spitzer investigated when he was the state’s swashbuckling attorney general. Spitzer’s probes were criticized by business interests as an abuse of power but were popular with New Yorkers and propelled him into the governorship.

Before resigning from office in a scandal, Spitzer was the most feared politician in the state — at one point famously calling himself a “fucking steamroller.” But since taking over the real estate firm built by his late father, he has kept a relatively low profile.

Bogaciu, though, claimed he felt threatened by Spitzer, and said he told the developer he didn’t need to speak that way because the building manager already told Bogaciu not to go into the pit.

“Mr. Spitzer continued his assault stating that ‘I will repeat it as many fucking times as I want,” Bogaciu said in his affidavit. “Mr. Spitzer continued stating that “those are not your fucking bricks, and good luck to you.’”

After the incident, Leitman Bailey’s firm filed for an order of protection preventing Spitzer from “all attempts to intimidate and harass Mr. Bogaciu” or anyone else at 980 Fifth Avenue.

“Mr. Bogaciu was especially surprised by Mr. Spitzer’s verbal attack because Mr. Bogaciu voted for Mr. Spitzer and admired his work as Attorney General and Governor,” the lawyer wrote. “While Mr. Spitzer might feel that he can disrespect an employee because he has touched the highest of state political office and financial inheritance, this Court should not allow him — or for that matter any political elite or whatever amount he inherited — to engage in such intimidation.”

Spitzer said in a legal filing that he was not amused by a “publicity stunt hit piece” that insinuated he implicitly threatened to use his power as a former government official against Bogaciu.

“It’s a little much” to say Bogaciu was living in fear over the incident, he added, asserting that warning a trespasser about being arrested is not “harassment.”

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Spitzer went on to attack Leitman Bailey and the co-op board, saying they have filed five demonstrably false verifications in the 13 months that the case had been ongoing. The most egregious, he said, was 980 Fifth resident Mary Ellen Meehan’s verification of the complaint, given that she later professed not to know the facts of the case.

When deposed by Spitzer’s attorney, Meehan admitted she had not read the allegations. She said she was “a useful idiot” and would not sign the verification again if asked. Leitman Bailey’s firm later amended the complaint, with Bogaciu verifying it.

“All of the alleged errors have been corrected,” Leitman Bailey said.

Spitzer said he intends to bring a malicious prosecution case against the 980 members and said Leitman Bailey should be referred for discipline.