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Rockland Green’s Legal Woes Continue As Entity Prepares To Bond $21 Million For New Animal Shelter in Haverstraw
LEGAL NEWS
A lawsuit filed in Rockland County Supreme Court last May by Rockland Green against a former Hi Tor Animal Shelter employee was dismissed by Justice Thomas Zugibe on Friday.
The Justice said the lawsuit was “wholly unsupported and entirely without merit,” on the first eight counts and the allegations were “conclusory” and “utterly insufficient” on the last three. Zugibe said Rockland Green failed to state a cause of action on any of the counts.
The lawsuit attempted to hold former shelter Executive Director Richard Tannenbaum* liable as an individual for “breach of contract” for a contract between Hi Tor Animal Care Center (which was signed by board co-president Gary Kogut) and Rockland Green. Rockland Green was suing Tannenbaum for $5 million, plus punitive damages.
At the heart of the case was whether Tannenbaum could be held liable as an individual and an employee for an alleged “breach of contract” and whether he owed a “duty of care” to Rockland Green (former Solid Waste Management Authority), which commandeered animal management services in the county in January 2023.
In both instances, the Court sided with Tannenbaum, citing the “plaintiff cannot maintain the action against Mr. Tannenbaum in his individual capacity for breach of the Agreement,” and that Rockland Green’s attorney Lawrence Garvey in his filing failed to show that Tannenbaum was personally bound by the contract. Rockland Green hoped the court would believe that the nonprofit’s executive director could somehow be converted into a signatory or a party to the contract between Rockland Green and the shelter, even though the argument lacked legal merit. The court tossed the first eight claims based on Tannenbaum’s Motion to Dismiss.
Rockland Green also threw a Hail Mary, hoping the court would buy the argument that Tannenbaum failed to uphold illusory duties to Rockland Green and negligently caused an alleged breach. Garvey added a tortious interference claim, alleging Tannenbaum sabotaged the contract between Rockland Green and Hi Tor for his own benefit. Both arguments failed. The court said neither made sense.
Zugibe wrote: “To prevail on a negligence cause of action, a plaintiff must establish the existence of a legal duty owed to plaintiff. Absent duty of care, there is no breach, and without breach there can be no liability.” Meaning Tannenbaum owed no direct duty to Rockland Green, a quasi-public authority that runs on and has been funding the litigation with taxpayer money.
Addressing a tortious interference claim, the judge also reiterated in his ruling that “there had to have been a valid contract between the plaintiff and a person or entity not party to the contract; the defendant’s knowledge of that contract; the defendant’s intentional procuring of the breach.” The judge said “a director of a corporation is not personally liable to one who has contracted with the corporation” even if steps he took resulted in the contract coming undone.
The judge also wrote: “The acts and omissions attributed to Mr. Tannenbaum which form the basis of the breach of contract claim were committed in the capacity as a corporate officer, and the plaintiffs have failed to adequately allege torts.”
In a letter sent Sunday to each member of Rockland Green’s board, which includes every town supervisor, several county legislators, Village of Haverstraw Mayor Michael Kohut, and County Executive Ed Day’s representative Stephen Powers, Tannenbaum wrote, “as members of the Rockland Green Board, each of you can see what Rockland Green’s leadership has done, the abuse of power it has exercised, its unfounded efforts to damage my reputation, and the malignancy inherent in its leadership that utilized unchecked power and created a false narrative against me simply to justify its illegitimate termination of Hi Tor’s contract.”
Tannenbaum told RCBJ he was glad to see justice prevail. “The suit was one of harassment and intimidation. It was baseless, but I’ve had it hanging over my head for seven months. This ruling sends a strong message to public authorities running on the taxpayer dime.”
Tension and ill will between Rockland Green and Hi Tor began when Day capitulated to Rockland Green Chairman Howard Phillips’ desire to take over management of the shelter’s physical plant in 2022. Phillips informed Day that the town supervisors wanted control of the shelter. The move forced Rockland Green and Hi Tor to enter into a contract, in which the shelter would continue its operations on site, while Rockland Green would manage the physical plant and maintain the grounds. In the new arrangement, Rockland Green became the taxing agency for animal management, opening with a $1.4 million levy in 2023. The levy for 2025 is over $2 million, a 43 percent rise and is estimated to rise to $2.5 million in 2026.
Prior to the contract, which was signed in December 2022, public officials who sit on the Rockland Green board were instrumental in bringing allegations to the District Attorney’s office that led to the arrest of the shelter’s then board president Debbie DiBernardo. She was accused of falsifying paperwork over a clowder of kittens and charged criminally. The case, which stretched over a year and cost the shelter thousands of dollars and a loss in donations, ended at the 11th hour when Tom Walsh’s DA Office agreed to drop the charges. DiBernardo had refused time and again to take a plea.
Once Hi Tor and Rockland Green entered into a contract, Hi Tor continued to undertake the arduous task of running shelter operations in an insufficient, decrepit facility. The nonprofit organization had been in the building for 50 years, and had been awaiting a shelter rebuild, which Day had championed. The organization had raised nearly $400,000, and the county had planned to spend $7.75 million to build a new facility with a combination of county funds, grants, and monies raised by the shelter. Bids for construction came in higher than the county budgeted.
Rockland Green’s shelter is slated to cost $18 million. However, the according to the preliminary bond offering statement, Rockland Green is borrowing $21.7 million. Taxpayers will begin to feel the pinch in 2026 when they start paying an estimated $1.5 million in debt service annually for 30 years (above and beyond the annual costs of operating the shelter).
The County’s rebuild effort was interrupted when Phillips came to the County Legislature, without any written documentation, and told the legislative body he could build a shelter elsewhere for $8 million. He had nothing specific in mind. That visit set in motion Rockland Green’s approval to take over animal management services. More than two years later, the beleaguered shelter is still in Pomona and taxpayers have footed the bill for the $3.8 million purchase of an empty warehouse that Rockland Green is proposing to transform into a shelter. The project, recently awarded to a North Carolina firm, O’Connor Company, is estimated to cost $18 million but based on Rockland’s Green’s history, many expect costs will far exceed these numbers.
In September 2023, Rockland Green abruptly and without warning tossed Hi Tor and many of its employees out of the facility, saying it had “breached the contract.” In what was a head-spinning event, long-time employees and leadership were “locked out” of their place of work, and nearly everything the nonprofit owned was commandeered by Rockland Green. Over several months, Rockland Green and Hi Tor “negotiated” over who owed whom money but came to an impasse. Many believe Rockland Green was hoping to lay claims to the monies Hi Tor raised for the rebuild. Those monies are with the Rockland Community Foundation. Former members of Hi Tor say “Rockland Green will never get their hands on that money.”
In May, Rockland Green filed its lawsuit against Hi Tor, its board members as individuals, and Tannenbaum. By many accounts, the juggernaut agency miscalculated, figuring Hi Tor would not have the financial means to defend itself. But Hi Tor had maintained its insurance and is being represented by its insurance company. When it came time to file its answer in court, Hi Tor not only raised multiple defenses – it counter-claimed and sued Rockland Green. The contract plainly stated that Rockland Green had to give Hi Tor 30-day notice if it was dissatisfied with the agreement, as well as time to cure the issue. Rockland Green violated that clause, according to the counterclaim.
“Hi Tor has counterclaimed against Rockland Green for breaching its contract and will likely prevail on its claims in court because the reasons shared with you by your leadership for termination were pretextual,” Tannenbaum said in a letter to Rockland Green’s board. “The facts that have never been shared with you are that despite us not being veterinarians (we were a shelter) and having a right to refuse sick animals, Rockland Green demanded we take sick and dying cats into our facility and then punished us for having those same sick and dying cats. Many of those cats arrived with only hours to live. Some expired almost immediately after animal control officers brought them to our facility.”
In October, Hi Tor board members named individually were released from the suit. But Rockland Green continued to pursue Tannenbaum, even adding in an amended complaint that accused Hi Tor and Tannenbaum of “conversion,” claiming the shelter stole food and medical supplies its facility and from Rockland Green on the day it was ousted. Tannenbaum had left the shelter nearly a month before Rockland Green’s seizure of the shelter.
The lawsuit, which has dragged on since May and is funded with taxpayer dollars, will continue with a February hearing between Hi Tor and Rockland Green.
*Editor’s Note: The defendant, Richard Tannenbaum, has a personal association with Rockland County Business Journal.
