“Hidden behind the limestone façade of a Museum Mile neoclassical is a corrupt group of entrenched cooperative directors who are exploiting the corporation by their criminal and other bad acts.”
Two longtime residents of this luxury 15-story building overlooking Central Park on the Upper East Side filed a lawsuit against the co-op board alleging that the members treat the tenants, as well as the edifice overlooking Central Park, with mob-like tactics–like offering a job to the president’s cousin to fix the elevator for $500,000 and running it as its “personal fiefdom”.
“A racket has been operating for over a decade in plain view and with impunity on a tiny stretch of upper Fifth Avenue,” the lawsuit quotes, filed by Elizabeth Sawyer and her husband Clifford Press, who have lived in the building for three decades. As such, the lawsuit was filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, the law specifically used to target organized crime, but adopted also in other co-op cases, when discounts, kickbacks and favoritism were involved.
The 48-page suit names 13 current and former famous members of the board as defendants, including baseball legend’s scion Steve Greenberg, and Mary Morgan, the daughter of former New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. Prominent among them is the name of John Breglio, ex-president, who is accused of “freezing out any dissenters” from the board and having the elevator fixed “wastefully and unnecessarily” in order to get a kickback of more than $1,000.
Ms. Sawyer and Mr. Press asked for an unspecified amount of damages and that all the defendants must resign from the board, according to the lawsuit.
According to The NY Post, an attorney for the board replied that this lawsuit was “meritless and frivolous, brought by a disgruntled co-op resident for the sole purpose of harassing her neighbors.”
This is only the last chapter of a long story. In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the board tried to harass the couple from the building, claiming that Ms. Sawyer had blocked a fire exit with water jugs and Mr. Press had kicked another resident’s dog till bleeding.
