Challenges Mount in Beach Lawsuit

A judge has dealt a setback to the Town of East Hampton and town trustees in a lawsuit that could effectively end access by the public to a roughly 4,000-foot-long portion of ocean beach.

The suit was brought in 2009 by property owners frustrated by the sometimes hundreds of trucks that would pass and often park in front of their houses on summer weekends.

In a June 2 decision, Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo denied a request by town lawyers to dismiss the case, reversing a decision in September and bolstering the property owners’ position that they own the beach in front of their houses.

“I feel very strongly about public access and that there has been a long tradition there. I want that protected,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said. He said that a legal strategy meeting with the town trustees would be held soon.

Matthew Skolnick, a Danbury, Conn., orthopedic surgeon and past president of the Seaview at Amagansett property owners association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said that he and his wife had owned a house on the beach there for 25 years and in that time observed a huge increase in four-wheel-drive traffic. “You used to see a couple of trucks off to the east, out in the distance,” he said. “It has multiplied to the point now where it has become insane.”

Truck Beach, as the stretch of sand east of Napeague Lane in Amagansett has unofficially begun to be called in recent years, is an increasingly popular alternative to the town’s official bathing beaches, especially among year-round residents. This has not sat well with nearby property owners.

The lawsuit claims that their property has been at times overrun with people parking for the day to swim, sunbathe, and barbecue. In dispute, too, is a narrow path used by trucks to reach the beach at the eastern end of Marine Boulevard. A related lawsuit filed by property owners about two miles to the east, including the White Sands Motel on Napeague, is ongoing.

Both suits argue that speeding vehicles are a risk to residents, their employees, and their guests, and that trucks have been illegally parked on beach grass, which could destabilize dunes. Also claimed is that bonfires and fireworks set off by beachgoers are a risk to upand properties.

“To my knowledge in the 30 years that I have gone down there, I don’t know of anyone being hurt or an incident. There’s a lot a self-policing,” said Tim Taylor, a land surveyor and president of Citizens for Access Rights. “There are a lot of kids down there, and we are concerned about safety, too.”

Dr. Skolnick took issue with the position of CfAR and other beach-driving proponents that the fight was about access. “We don’t care who’s on the beach. We just don’t want a dangerous situation,” he said.

“I just think that they want the people off the beach, and the trucks are a way to do that,” Mr. Taylor said. “Trucks are access; you don’t have access by any other means. Do that and you have a de facto private beach,” he said, observing, as did Dr. Skolnick, that the nearest public parking area has room for only about 20 or so vehicles.

“I appreciate their concern about the intensity of the use,” Mr. Taylor, who is also a captain in the Springs Fire Department, said. “I don’t think that it is an abusive use.”

In the June 2 ruling Justice Garguilo denied a request by the town and trustees to have the case dismissed. He upheld the property owners’ position that they, and not the town or trustees, own the beach to the high-tide line, reversing his earlier finding.

Justice Garguilo wrote in his decision that the plaintiffs’ lawyers and a real estate title expert had demonstrated a chain of ownership on their individual deeds going back to an 1882 agreement between the town trustees and Arthur Benson, an early developer who at one time owned all of Montauk. He said that the town and trustees had not adequately supported their position that 20th-century subdivision maps that predated the deeds and depicted the properties as extending only to the end of beach grass — not the beach itself — were binding. This will likely be resolved at trial.

“The ownership issue is of considerably less interest to us; it’s the trucks,” Dr. Skolnick said.

In December, the East Hampton Town Board retained a lawyer specializing in public condemnation with the intention of acquiring the disputed oceanfront strip and Marine Boulevard access path. In a January interview, Michael Rikon of Goldstein, Rikon, Rikon and Houghton in Manhattan said doing so would serve a “very clear public purpose.”

The potential cost of condemnation could depend on the court’s final decision about whether the town or the property owners owned the portion of beach above the high tide line. Dr. Skolnick speculated that it would come at a high price that would not be welcomed by East Hampton Town taxpayers.

Question of History

The 1882 deal between Benson and the Trustees of the Freeholders and Commonalty of the Town of East Hampton read in part: “And also except and reserved to the inhabitants of the Town of East Hampton the right to land fish boats and netts to spread the netts on the adjacent sands and care for the fish and material as has been customary heretofore on the South Shore of the Town lying Westerly of these conveyed premises.”

A key issue remaining for an expected trial is whether rights of use guaranteed to fishing crews in the Benson deal are relevant today.

According to the property owners’ claim, though “net fishermen” used the beach in the past, it had not been “accessed by vehicles and used by the public for recreational purposes in its current nature and intensity” prior to 1991, when town beach-driving rules were amended, Justice Garguilo wrote.

The suit claims that the use of the beach today by members of the public is not authorized by the language in the Benson agreement. Justice Garguilo wrote that the property owners may remain bound by the fishing exception in the Benson deed and that questions about its meaning today remain.

Dr. Skolnick said that attempts to negotiate a settlement with town officials have been rebuffed. “The town is, by its actions, jeopardizing access to the beach,” he said.

Mr. Cantwell said that any discussions would have to include the town trustees as well as user groups, such as CfAR.

A date for the trial has not been set.