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Hi Tor’s Insurance Company Will Pay Rockland Green $150,000; Rockland Green Will Use Taxpayer Money to Pay Hi Tor $50,000
By Tina Traster
After nearly two and a half years of legal wrangling between Rockland Green and Hi Tor Animal Shelter, the case has been settled, though not on the merits of the claim or counterclaim. According to a letter filed in Court last Tuesday, the settlement agreement has been accepted by the boards of both organizations and is being circulated for signatures.
Rockland Green has paid the West Group Law Firm $3.8 million from Jan. 2025 through Sept. 22, 2025 in legal fees, according to data provided by Rockland Green. This means that Rockland Green is averaging $315,000 a month in legal fees for outside counsel.
With the protracted battle winding up, Rockland Green (Rockland County Solid Waste Authority) will walk away with $150,000 paid by an insurance company, while likely having shelled out much more than that to litigate the case.
In contrast, Rockland Green will pay $50,000 to Hi Tor, which was represented by an insurance company and did not have to dip into its own treasure to defend itself or prosecute its counterclaims. Hi Tor’s insurance companies, Landmark American Insurance Company, RSUI Group, Maxum Indemnity Company, and The Hartford Insurance Group, Inc. have all been released from liability, according to the settlement. The settlement does mention a release for an insurer for Rockland Green, indicating that payment to Hi Tor, a 60-year-old nonprofit animal organization, will be paid for with taxpayer money.
Hi Tor says it will use the $50,000, along with recent large donations left through wills and estates, to breathe life back into its mission. While the organization lost access to the county-owned shelter, it has continued to care for strays and unwanted animals. Hi Tor also has a large endowment in the Rockland Community Fund, which was originally allocated for a shelter rebuild.
Rockland Green sued Hi Tor in May 2024, claiming the animal shelter breached a contract with the tax-funded public authority. In turn, Hi Tor countersued, saying it was Rockland Green that breached the two-year contract because it terminated without notice or an opportunity to cure any deficiencies, and not the other way around.
Rockland Green never issued a notice of intention to terminate the contract between January 1, 2023 through September 21, as required under the terms of the agreement. Without written notice, Rockland Green unilaterally decided the relationship was over because it says it didn’t approve of how the shelter was being run.
From the outset, Rockland Green and Hi Tor were in an adversarial relationship. Hi Tor believed it was functioning as an independent “contract vendor” of Rockland Green (in a manner similar to how it operated under Rockland County for many years), while the public authority viewed its role as overseer of both the facility and its day-to-day operations. The arrangement lasted less than nine months. In Sept. 2023, Rockland Green ejected Hi Tor from the shelter on Fireman’s Drive in Pomona it had run for 60 years, and assigned a local cat rescue, Four Legs Good of New City, to run the shelter. Rockland Green locked Hi Tor out and retained all of its assets.
Shortly after the eviction, Rockland Green and Hi Tor began negotiations that lasted months, continuing to cost taxpayers legal monies. Rockland Green, according to multiple sources, said Hi Tor had been paid upward of $130,000 in unused taxpayer-funded salaries. However, Hi Tor said it had not been paid more than $180,000 for reimbursements it advanced under its contract, as well as compensation for the possessions Rockland Green retained.
After months of futile negotiations, Rockland Green filed a lawsuit in May 2024, claiming eight counts of breach of contract, two counts of negligence, and one count of theft (the claim for theft pertained to items taken on the day Hi Tor was evicted and gathered some of its belongings, according to sources). Rockland Green was seeking $5 million in damages.
There is a general belief among insiders that Rockland Green presumed Hi Tor did not have the wherewithal to defend itself. But the nonprofit organization had maintained its insurance policy, and was represented at no cost to the organization. After Rockland Green filed suit, Hi Tor counterclaimed for breach of contract, and monies owned for the value of every item left behind in the shelter.
But Rockland Green’s lawsuit took the feud a step further, personally suing some, mysteriously not all, of Hi Tor’s board members personally, as well as its former executive director, who was no longer at the shelter when Rockland Green evicted its employees. These legal maneuvers were a goose chase (and a waste of taxpayer money) from the get-go because the board members and executive director could not be held personally liable in a contract dispute between the entities. Eventually, Hi Tor’s board members were voluntarily released by Rockland Green’s counsel, but the solid waste public authority continued to dog the former executive director, who was also covered by Hi Tor’s insurers.
In Jan. 2025, seven months after the suit was filed, Justice Thomas Zugibe dismissed the eleven counts against the former executive director, writing that the case was “baseless” and “without merit.” The court said an executive director could not be held liable for a potential breach of a contract that he was not a party to – Legal 101.
For nearly 11 months, the case dragged on with court appearances and depositions, some lasting for days. At nearly every court hearing before Zugibe, Rockland Green sent both inside counsel, Lawrence Garvey, as well as an attorney from the West Law Group, Lee Apotheker, the brother of a Rockland Green staffer. It is unclear why two attorneys were needed at every turn.
Rockland Green’s Legal Costs Skyrocketing At Taxpayer Expense
Rockland Green’s legal budget rose exponentially between 2022 and 2023 from $2.2 million to $4 million, partially due to its takeover of animal management in the county. For 2024, Rockland Green projected $3.1 million in legal fees, but the final tally came in at $4.1 million.
Rockland Green has paid the West Group Law Firm $3.8 million from Jan. 2025 through Sept. 22, 2025 in legal fees, according to data provided by Rockland Green. This means that Rockland Green is averaging $315,000 a month in legal fees for outside counsel – most of the settlement talks have taken place in October and November. Rockland Green has at least three in-house attorneys listed on its website: Ken Murphy, Lawrence Garvey, and Keith Braunfotel.
The FOILed legal costs do not break down how fees to West Group were used or how much was allocated to animal management or the Hi Tor litigation. The legal fees also do not include hours clocked by Rockland Green’s in-house attorneys, who work on salary.
Since the summer, Rockland Green and Hi Tor’s attorneys have been taking many hours (and sometimes days) of depositions, but insiders say the two sides were seeking to settle the case. Cases are more likely to settle when one party is represented by an insurance company, which weighs the cost of continuing litigation and a potential trial, against paying a settlement to minimize its exposure. The merits of the case don’t always weigh in on a decision to settle.
In this case, the agreement to resolve the case made it clear that the payments made in settlement not be construed as an admission of liability on either side, nor that any act or omission by either side in any way caused or contributed to any injuries or damages. The payments made as part of the settlement were paid to save further costs of litigation, not to compensate either side for any wrongdoing. In other words, after years of litigation and the expenses incurred to prosecute and defend the disputed claims, neither a court nor jury will ever decide who was right and who was wrong, or who actually breached the contract.
Meanwhile, Rockland Green is building a shelter that has been at the heart of controversy over its cost, size and location.
Last December, Rockland Green approved an $18 million bond issue to cover the costs of the $3.5 million purchase of an empty, built-on-spec warehouse in Jan. 2024 and a $14.7 million construction contract to convert the window-less warehouse into an animal shelter in a remote section of the Village of West Haverstraw. Over the past several months, Rockland Green has issued nearly a dozen change orders, costing more than $250,000.
The former Solid Waste Management Authority, which commandeered animal management in 2022, awarded O’Connor Company, a Pinehurst, North Carolina firm, a contract to build out the 15,000 square-foot warehouse shell into a bilevel 28,000 square foot animal shelter at 427 Beach Road.
Phillips had originally told County Legislators a new shelter could be built for $8 million.
Taxpayers will be on the hook to foot the bill to pay both principal and interest on the animal shelter bond over the next thirty years. The bond is a 30-year “Special Obligation” bond with a face value of $18 million that carries a 5.5 percent interest rate for about $9 million of the issue, and 6.25 percent for $9 million that matures in 2049 and 2054. The bonds are rated Aa3, a high rating with a low credit risk because taxpayers guarantee its repayment.
On top of debt service payments, Rockland taxpayers in each town except Orangetown (which contracts with the Hudson Valley Humane Society) will be taxed for the cost of operating the new shelter.
In 2023, Rockland Green imposed a $1.4 million tax levy on residents to support the shelter operation. In 2024, the levy rose to $1.6 million, and then to $1.8 million, a 28.5 percent increase over three years. According to the bond offering, this year’s annual operating expenses rose to $2.5 million. Rockland Green expects a 5 percent annual increase in the shelter’s operating expenses but the costs of running and staffing the 28,000 square-foot facility will likely exceed those projections.
Rockland Green operates on a $90 million annual budget, taxing residents roughly $21 million in 2024. The voting board of the authority includes all five town supervisors, two village mayors, seven county legislators and a representative from County Executive Ed Day’s office. Phillips has held the chairmanship of Rockland Green for more than a decade.
