02/17/2022
Sokoloff Stern LLP in the Southampton Press, with quotes from Steven Stern.
------------------------
Picnic Area Lawsuits Headed To Court, Hinges On Defining ‘Nuisance’
Do SUVs and 4x4 vehicles parking on a 2,000-foot-long stretch of beach in Southampton Village, known as the Picnic Area, create an unlawful interference with the use and enjoyment of neighboring property owners’ land under the law? Is it a nuisance?
Litigants in the case of Meadow Lane homeowners against the Southampton Town Trustees and Southampton Village will have to go to trial to find out.
A State Supreme Court Appellate Division decision on February 9 upheld the dismissal of most of the homeowners’ complaints in a suit first launched in 2015. Brought by oceanfront residents Kathleen Araskog Thomas, Andrew S. Thomas, Rand V. Araskog and Jessie M. Araskog, the lawsuit targeted provisions in village and Trustee regulations that allow for summertime driving on a small stretch of shoreline located between Road H and Shinnecock County Park East.
By 2018, all the petitioners save Kathleen Araskog Thomas had dropped out of the suit.
Generally, beach driving is prohibited during the daytime hours; over time, the Picnic Area became the sole spot in Southampton Town to visit and park on the beach for a day of oceanfront enjoyment. The petitioners argued that having just this one spot singled them out to unfairly bear the burden of beach driving beachgoers.
Represented by Southampton attorney Nica B. Strunk, the plaintiffs argued that allowing beach driving and parking near their property violated their rights to equal protection under the law. They also saw the regulations as a de facto taking of their property.
State Supreme Court Justice Joseph A. Santorelli dismissed the claims in a 2018 decision.
Homeowners along the oceanfront in Southampton Village own the beach from their house to the mean high water mark, while the Town Trustees hold a public access easement along all ocean beaches within the town. Their access extends from the crest of the natural dunes to the high tide line. The 1686 Dongan Patent established that easement and gives Town Trustees the power to regulate activities in that zone, such as fishing and collecting seaweed.
Plaintiffs had argued that the regulations that allow beach driving and parking violate state erosion management rules and were beyond the authority of the Town Trustees and village officials to enact. The private property owners said the State Department of Environmental Conservation should be compelled to revoke regulatory programs that allow for driving and parking on the beach landward of the debris line.
In the 2018 decision, Judge Santorelli dismissed the assertion against the DEC, finding the plaintiffs were improperly trying to direct how the agency handles regulating coastal areas.
As the case wore on, attorneys for the village and trustees argued that, because certain matters had been decided during earlier suits, they were precluded from being raised again.
In 1988, several property owners commenced a lawsuit over the same beach driving regulations. Referred to in the recent determination as “the Katz action” — the plaintiff was property owner Frances Katz — it was resolved in favor of the village and the Trustees during the mid-1990s.
In the next decade, some of the same neighbors sued over the same issue again. And, again, in a decision rendered in 2005, supported by a second decision handed down following an appeal, the courts found in favor of the village and the Trustees. The courts ruled that they could not raise anew an issue already adjudicated.
In all, the homeowners raised eight arguments against permitted beach driving on the Picnic Area — in the 2015 suit that was dismissed in 2018, and in the subsequent appeal decided last week. The Appellate Division upheld the dismissal of all the arguments save the debate pertaining to nuisance.
To be entitled to damages for private nuisance, last week’s decision notes, “A plaintiff must establish interference with his or her right to use and enjoy land, substantial in nature, intentional or neglect in origin, unreasonable in character and caused by the defendant’s conduct.”
Reviewing photographs provided by the plaintiffs, the court did find that they raise “triable issues” as to whether driving and parking in the beach area, at the intensity described by the homeowners, meets the threshold for “unreasonable.”
The “poster child” photos offered, said Steven Stern, an attorney from the Carle Place-based Sokoloff Stern LLP representing the Town Trustees, were taken on days of maximum usage — Fourth of July and Labor Day. That volume of visitors occurs just a few times of the year, he emphasized.
A second, similar suit brought by neighbors elicited testimony from users of the Picnic Area who spoke of it as a way of life for locals and said there are rarely a lot of vehicles parked along the strip of shoreline. They said they had been using it for generations, Stern recounted, and using it before many of the nine homeowners with frontage on the beach bought their properties, much less filed their suits. Four of the nine property owners are suing, Stern informed. A second suit, an appeal of a 2008 dismissal, will also go to court on the nuisance issue.
“We are pleased the appellate court recognized the long history of legislative and judicial recognition of the public’s easement over the subject beaches,” Trustee President Scott Horowitz said. “We believe the Trustees will be successful in demonstrating at trial that our regulations do not cause a nuisance.”
Speaking on behalf of the village, lifelong resident and Village Board member Joseph McLoughlin made note of the historic nature of the public’s push to retain beach access. “I support the public’s right to access the beach,” he said, adding that he hoped the two sides could reach a compromise.
McLoughlin recalled that several years ago, when Mark Epley was mayor, there was a move to cap the number of vehicles that could drive onto the beach. The measure didn’t progress to enactment, however.
“This is a very complex issue,” the Village Board member acknowledged. Summarizing, he said that people have the right to enjoy their own property, while the public has a right to access the beach. “I don’t support privatizing our beaches,” he asserted. “The beach is for everybody and we want to keep it for everybody.”
Strunk did not return a request for comment.
