It took David Ganz, an East Hampton Village resident, just over a minute to enter Lot 1 at Main Beach and park his car one day last June, but that short span led to the village revoking his parking pass for the lot and his use of a locker in the pavilion and to Mr. Ganz filing suit to have them reinstated.
The village claimed he drove recklessly and damaged property. Mr. Ganz has consistently disputed those claims.
There are over 200 people on the waiting list for Lot 1, which is adjacent to the Main Beach pavilion.
Through the winter, the village tried to settle the case, but those talks have come to an end. “Mr. Ganz doesn’t have an interest in settling,” Lisa Perillo, the village attorney, said Monday. “That’s my interpretation. We were very close. We put out our best effort.”
In early February, Mr. Ganz’s lawyer, Anthony Palumbo, filed new papers with the Suffolk County Supreme Court including videos taken from cameras affixed to the Main Beach pavilion. They were obtained by Mr. Ganz’s criminal defense attorney, which he required because in addition to having his Lot 1 pass revoked, the village charged him with leaving the scene of a crime.
In a newly submitted affidavit Mr. Ganz explained the reasoning behind allowing the new evidence.
“I ask the court to indulge me since we were not given these materials until after our initial moving papers were filed, and it depicts the actual incident in question,” he wrote. The village, he said, claimed the video was overwritten by subsequent videos and therefore denied his Freedom of Information Law requests. “Fortunately, the defense attorney wasn’t in on the gamesmanship and provided the exculpatory video,” Mr. Ganz said.
(After a delay of months, The Star was able to obtain one of the videos described through a FOIL request.)
The three overlapping videos depict the incident from different angles: the approach to the lot, the entrance of the lot, and the western portion of the lot. All told, they cover just under two minutes.
The entrance to Lot 1 is roughly the width of two cars, on one side bound by an attendant’s chair and on the other by a retaining wall. In the middle, a traffic cone, meant to stop cars from entering while the attendant checks each entering vehicle for a parking sticker.
The first video shows Mr. Ganz approaching behind a line of cars, moving at the same speed as a cyclist. An orange car, in front of the cyclist, slows as it approaches the entrance and nearly comes to a stop in the lane of traffic. Instead of waiting for the orange car to move from the turning lane, Mr. Ganz makes the right turn into the lot prematurely. That ends video one.
The second video, taken from a camera affixed to the back of the Main Beach Pavilion that shows the entrance, begins with a silver car that has made a partial turn toward the lot. The beach attendant is standing in the roadway about five feet from the car, checking for a pass. If the car were to complete its turn, it would likely drive over the curb between the cone and retaining wall. However, with no pass, the car does not enter.
While that’s happening, Lee Bertrand, the assistant beach manager (identified in court papers), is speaking with someone in a pickup truck, about 10 parking spots away from the entrance. After the silver car drives away, the beach attendant returns to his seat. Two cars pass before the orange car (the same one from the first video) stops at the lot’s entrance. As previously described, the biker appears and passes the orange car, now stopped. Mr. Ganz, instead of waiting for the orange car to move, begins his turn into the lot. He appears to drive over the curb, stopping on the sidewalk between the traffic cone and retaining wall, as the attendant walks toward his car to inspect his sticker. The attendant is at least eight feet away from Mr. Ganz’s car. He walks back to his chair and sits again. As Mr. Ganz moves into the lot, his car is visibly jostled as it brushes the retaining wall.
Mr. Ganz drives toward Mr. Bertrand and the pickup truck, which is blocking the lane of traffic. The lot between the entrance and Mr. Bertrand is only a quarter full, there are five parked cars in the video. A sixth, a white Jeep, is parked in a yellow-striped no-parking area. Other than Mr. Bertrand, there are no pedestrians.
As Mr. Ganz drives around the pickup truck, he appears to accelerate. After he passes, Mr. Bertrand gestures toward Mr. Ganz’s car, and then back to the entrance. He points toward Mr. Ganz’s car, now out of frame, and begins to text. His conversation ends and the pickup truck follows Mr. Ganz’s car out of frame. Thus ends the second video.
The third video shows Mr. Ganz pull into a beachfront spot, leaving three spaces between his car and the next. The lot is nearly empty. He exits his car as the pickup truck, driving more slowly than Mr. Ganz, parks to his right. Mr. Ganz looks at the side of his car that brushed the retaining wall, opens his hatchback, removes nothing, closes it, and walks toward the pavilion. The man in the gray pickup truck exits his car. The video ends.
In Mr. Ganz’s new affidavit, he points to perceived inaccuracies in the village affidavits. In Mr. Bertrand’s affidavit, for example, he claims he saw Mr. Ganz fail to stop as he entered the lot and almost hit the attendant. In the video obtained by The Star, Mr. Bertrand can be seen inspecting something given to him by the driver of the pickup truck as Mr. Ganz begins to enter the lot and seems to first look up at Mr. Ganz’s car only after the attendant is returning to his seat.
“It begs the question as to why the village employees would go to such lengths to fabricate these claims, have me charged with leaving the scene of an accident, and perjure themselves in court submissions,” Mr. Ganz says in the new affidavit.
He claims the affidavits were fabrications to discredit him and the revocation of his pass and locker were retaliation for his speaking out at village board meetings with “justifiable outrage” because the village was not abiding by open meeting and FOIL laws. For years, Mr. Ganz has criticized the village for not following those laws, even as recently as January, a claim denied at the same meeting by the village administrator, Marcos Baladron.
“I don’t want to comment on the veracity of witnesses or the facts of the case,” Mr. Palumbo said. “However, we do feel good about Mr. Ganz’s position and that he was deprived of due process regarding the revocation of the permit.”
“The permit is not a vested right,” said Ms. Perillo. “It’s a privilege and the village can revoke the privilege if it’s abused, as it was in this case. The videos are limited. We have multiple eyewitnesses. Mr. Ganz has shown a pattern of abuse. I’m very confident we will win in the end.” She said the claims Mr. Ganz made in his recent affidavit were “Completely unfounded and off base, completely incorrect. As it happens in litigation, he has couched his claims to support his evidence. We don’t agree with his characterizations.”
On Monday, the East Hampton Village Board held a public hearing on legislation that would specifically codify that the village “reserves the right to revoke any permit or pass [. . .] concerning beach parking lots, facilities and lockers, to limit the number of permits and passes issued, and to institute and impose new or revised rules or regulations concerning the use of same.” The proposed addition to the code states that “failure to obey any of the codes, rules, and regulations applicable to the Main Beach pavilion, parking lots, lockers, or facilities shall be grounds for revocation of the permit. . . .”
There was no public comment, Mr. Ganz was not in attendance, and the hearing was closed.
