Soundview Assocs. v. Town of Riverhead

• Decision Date: 30 September 2013
• Docket Number: No. 09–CV–4095 (JFB)(AKT).,09–CV–4095 (JFB)(AKT).
• Parties: SOUNDVIEW ASSOCIATES, Plaintiff, v. TOWN OF RIVERHEAD, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of New York

973 F.Supp.2d 275

SOUNDVIEW ASSOCIATES, Plaintiff,

v.TOWN OF RIVERHEAD, et al., Defendants.

No. 09–CV–4095 (JFB)(AKT).

United States District Court, E.D. New York.

Sept. 30, 2013.

David Antwork of Campanelli & Associates, Merrick, N.Y., for Plaintiff.

Daniel P. Barker and Frank A. Isler of Smith, Finkelstein, Lundberg, Isler & Yakaboski, LLP, Riverhead, N.Y. for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JOSEPH F. BIANCO, District Judge:

Plaintiff Soundview Associates (“plaintiff” or “Soundview”) brought this action against the Town of Riverhead (the “Town”), Richard Ehlers (“Ehlers”), and Dawn C. Thomas (“Thomas”) (collectively, “defendants”), alleging violations of Soundview's First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of its grievances, its Fourteenth Amendment right to procedural due process, and its Fourteenth Amendment right to substantive due process.¹

Specifically, plaintiff asserts that defendants violated its constitutional rights when, among other things: (1) defendants deprived Soundview in 2003—in an arbitrary and capricious manner—of the ability to build a health spa (plaintiff's “2002 Application”) on a 191–acre site in Riverhead, despite the existence of a 1982 Special Permit that allowed such construction, and (2) defendants wrongfully conditioned the processing of a separate application to construct a clubhouse on the property (the “2005 Applications”) on plaintiff's withdrawal of its continuing application with the Town for the health spa, as well as plaintiff's withdrawal of a pending state court action challenging the 2003 health spa decision. Soundview initiated this action seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as attorney's fees, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (“Section 1983”) with respect to each claim.

On November 28, 2011, defendants moved for partial summary judgment. By Memorandum and Order dated September 28, 2012, this Court denied defendants' motion for summary judgment on the ground that plaintiff has failed to demonstrate injury. In so ruling, the Court reasoned that plaintiff had shown an injury sufficient to confer standing—namely, the adverse effect of defendants' conduct upon plaintiff's interest in the appeal of the Article 78 proceeding (contesting the denial of its resort and spa permit request). However, the Court granted defendants' motion as to plaintiff's substantive and procedural due process claims on the ground that plaintiff cannot demonstrate a federally protected property interest upon which to predicate such claims. Moreover, even assuming arguendo that plaintiff had a protected property interest, the Court concluded that its due process claims would still fail. As to the substantive due process claim, the undisputed facts demonstrate that the Town had legitimate interests that rationally could have been furthered by the denial of plaintiff's 2002 Application, including the preservation of the scenic easement, and no rational jury—even construing the facts most favorably to plaintiff—could find otherwise. With respect to the procedural due process claim, plaintiff failed to put forth any evidence that it was denied adequate process with respect to its submission of its 2002 Application, the hearings regarding the 2002 Application, or the ultimate denial of the 2002 Application. Thus, the uncontroverted evidence is that plaintiff was afforded adequate due process with respect to its 2002 Application. The Court declined to address the First Amendment claim, as defendants did not move for summary judgment on that claim at the time, and also denied defendants' motion for summary judgment on qualified immunity grounds (on the basis that defendants' motion failed to clearly address the First Amendment claim in the context of qualified immunity) without prejudice to defendants filing another motion for summary judgment on that basis.

Presently before the Court is defendants' second motion for summary judgment made pursuant to Federal Rule of Procedure 56. Defendants move for summaryjudgment with respect to plaintiff's First Amendment right to petition claim on the basis that (1) plaintiff cannot demonstrate that the events surrounding its withdrawal of its appeal of a state court decision that affirmed the Town's denial of its 2002 Application constituted a violation of its First Amendment rights, and (2) the individual defendants—Ehlers and Thomas—are entitled to qualified immunity with respect to the First Amendment claim. For the reasons set forth in detail herein, the Court grants defendants' motion in its entirety.

Plaintiff has failed to set forth evidence from which a rational jury could find that plaintiff has satisfied any of the three elements of a First Amendment right to petition claim. First, because the undisputed evidence indicates that the Board's denial of plaintiff's 2002 Application did not constitute an abuse of discretion, but rather that the decision was based upon a clear analysis of the circumstances, plaintiff's appeal pertaining to that denial does not have First Amendment protection. Second, even assuming that plaintiff's appeal falls within the scope of First Amendment protection, plaintiff has failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact with respect to defendants' motivation for declining to process the 2005 Applications as submitted while the 2002 Application remained unresolved. Because it is undisputed that both the 2005 Applications and the 2002 Application pertained to the same parcel of land, the Town determined that their environmental impact needed to be assessed in a coordinated fashion under the State's environmental laws. Accordingly, and as explicitly set forth in an email from defendant Thomas to plaintiff's tenant's counsel, defendants provided plaintiff's tenant with an opportunity to amend the 2005 Applications to include the spa proposed in the 2002 Application. However, this opportunity was not seized; instead, plaintiff withdrew its appeal related to the 2002 Application, making the Board's denial of that Application final. Given that the offer to amend was undisputedly not acted upon, any subsequent discussions that defendants may have been involved in about the need to withdraw the appeal could not rationally be found to have been motivated by a desire on the part of defendants to infringe upon plaintiff's First Amendment rights. Instead, any such discussion of withdrawing the appeal would have been offered as an alternative to the amendment option that plaintiff's tenant declined to exercise. Third, even if plaintiff could establish that its appeal was protected by the First Amendment and that defendants' refusal to proceed with the 2005 Applications as submitted was motivated by a desire to infringe upon plaintiff's First Amendment rights, the uncontroverted evidence indicates that plaintiff has not suffered the type of harm required in a First Amendment right of petition case. Because plaintiff's land sale to its tenant went forward for the contemplated $10 million despite defendant's alleged improper conduct, and because any other non-speech harms alleged by plaintiff are based on pure speculation, plaintiff has failed to establish the type of concrete non-speech harms necessary to defeat summary judgment on this type of First Amendment right of petition claim. Moreover, to the extent that this is one of those cases where only an actual chilling of speech need be shown to constitute harm, defendant provided plaintiff's tenant with an opportunity to amend its 2005 Applications to include the spa proposed in the 2002 Application and, in effect, preserve plaintiff's right of appeal as to any decision ultimately rendered about construction of the spa. Said another way, had the amendment been made, rather than the appeal simply withdrawn, plaintiff's right to appeal any decisionissued with respect to the spa project would have been preserved for a later date. For all of these reasons, plaintiff's showings on each of the three elements of its First Amendment claim are insufficient to defeat summary judgment.

Defendants Thomas and Ehlers also argue, in the alternative, that they are entitled to qualified immunity on the First Amendment claim. Because, based on the undisputed facts of this case, no rational jury could conclude that it was objectively unreasonable for defendants Thomas and Ehlers to believe that by declining to move forward with the 2005 Applications as submitted—so as to consider the cumulative environmental impact of both sets of projects proposed for the particular parcel of land—they were not violating a clearly established right, summary judgment on the issue of qualified immunity is warranted in their favor.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

General familiarity with the case is assumed, based on the prior summary judgment briefing and the Court's September 28, 2012 Memorandum and Order. However, for purposes of this opinion, the Court has summarized below the facts relevant to the First Amendment claim and the issue of qualified immunity.

The Court has taken the facts set forth below from the parties' depositions, affidavits, exhibits, and respective Rule 56.1 Statements of Facts.² Upon consideration of a motion for summary judgment, the Court shall construe the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. See Capobianco v. City of N.Y., 422 F.3d 47, 50 (2d Cir.2005). Unless otherwise noted, where a party's 56.1 statement is cited, that fact is undisputed or the opposing party has not pointed to any evidence in the record to contradict it. ³

1. The Property, the 1982 Special Permit, and Developments Prior to 2002

At some point prior to January 1982, plaintiff purchased a 191–acre parcel of land located in the Town of Riverhead, which bordered the Long Island Sound to the north, Oakleigh Avenue to the west, Sound Avenue to the south, and a privately owned farm, known as Wulforst Farm, to the east (the “initial parcel”). (Defs.' 56.1 ¶ 2.) ⁴ The...