Judge Lets Southampton Off $70 Million Default Judgment Hook

A judge has decided to excuse in a timely manner, denying a motion that could have cost the town $70 million in a default judgment.

The decision came two weeks after Michael Sordi, the town attorney who had been charged with responding to the lawsuit, . Sordi told the court he failed to reply because of personal issues — the death of two family members within a week of each other.

"The failure to answer was unintentional, inadvertent and due solely to my mistake," Sordi wrote. He asked the court to deem it "excusable neglect."

In a court document dated Feb. 25, Judge Joseph F. Bianco ruled against the motion for default judgment filed by attorneys for Nancy Genovese, an East Quogue woman arrested in July 2009 outside the Air National Guard base in Westhampton and charged with criminal trespass. According to authorities, Genovese was taking pictures where photography was clearly prohibited and she had guns in her car. She said she had just come from a shooting range and was taking photos of an ANG helicopter for a patriotic website, and the charge against her was dismissed. She filed a federal lawsuit in July 2010 claiming numerous Constitutional violations, economic loss, physical pain and suffering, and mental anguish.

The town and codefendant Lt. Robert Iberger of the town police were served with the lawsuit on Aug. 27, and were supposed to respond by Oct. 29, according to an affidavit by Genovese’s attorney William Germano of the Law Office of Frederick Brewington. The lawsuit also targeted Suffolk County and members of the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department.

When the town did not act, Germano filed for a default judgment in December.

Sordi told the court that on Sept. 29 he requested more time from Brewington to answer the case, because he learned his mother was dying. She died Oct. 6 and a week later his 25-year-old nephew died, he said.

"I was in and out of my office over the course of these weeks, tending to family business and grieving the loss of these family members," Sordi wrote to the court in January. "Quite frankly, I forgot that I had not served the answer to the complaint on behalf of these defendants, because the answer had in fact been substantially completed prior to these events, and it was only in need of final review prior to service.

“I simply got ‘caught up' in my personal events and I thought, erroneously, that I had actually served the answer, when in fact I had forgotten to upon my return to work."