Lawsuits Test Southampton Trustees' Authority

A vicious storm in 1992 set off a barrage of lawsuits years later between residents and the Southampton Town Trustees, but two State Supreme Court decisions handed down in January gave the controversy a push forward toward resolution.

A judge dismissed several aspects of two lawsuits against the Trustees — and chose other aspects of the cases that will be permitted to move forward at trial. The judge also agreed to combine into one trial a West Hampton Dunes lawsuit and the cases of the Trustees vs. Albert Marine Construction et al and Trustees vs. the Village of Quogue. All of the cases concern the Trustees’ right to exercise authority and oversight.

West Hampton Dunes Mayor Gary Vegliante accuses the Trustees of spending public funds on lawsuits against people they don’t like. "The Trustees are bullies and are witch hunters," he said last week.

But the Trustees say they must stand up in court whenever necessary to defend public beach access and the marine environment, as they are charged to do under the Dongan Patent, the Colonial Era document from which they derive their authority.

The battle between West Hampton Dunes and the Trustees stems from the question of who owns land that was formed in Moriches Bay during a 1992 storm that caused the ocean to break through Dune Road. Some village residents say the land is theirs to subdivide and build upon, while the Trustees, who own the bay bottoms in town, say that property boundaries do not change as the result of a sudden, avulsive event, such as the break in Dune Road. The Trustees commenced a lawsuit in 2006 asserting ownership of the disputed land.

But the fight has grown beyond the original matter at hand. Two lawsuits filed in 2010 challenge the Trustees’ jurisdiction within incorporated villages and their authority to control their own finances and enter into contracts.

Justice Peter H. Mayer on Jan. 12 denied the village’s request that the court declare that the Trustees need the approval of the Town Board to make financial decisions and commence litigation.

Mayer did allow a complaint to move forward that challenges the Trustees’ authority to regulate construction and the placement of sand and earth on the village’s ocean beaches. Village residents will also be allowed to pursue allegations of unauthorized Trustee expenditures, such as donating public funds to not-for-profits and granting no-bid contracts.

"We are pleased with a portion of the decision and not so pleased with another decision,” Vegliante said. “They ruled that they can hold their own accounts and I don't agree with that, but they decidedly ruled that their books need to be examined. The courts were very clear on that part."

The Trustees were confident the court would ultimately find they handle public funds properly. “We have our own independent auditor and the town audits us,” Trustee Fred Havemeyer said Monday.

The Trustees say the lawsuits coming from West Hampton Dunes Village and certain residents are really just a way of delaying the decision of who owns the disputed land.

The sand deposited by the storms added width to Dune Road north of Pike’s Beach and formed a large spit jutting out into the bay. Properties that were on Moriches Bay now had a swath of land separating them from the water, and some owners say their property line moved to the waterfront as a result.

Vegliante said the Trustees were offered a settlement that would have put the matter to rest, but they refused. However, Eric Shultz, the president of the Trustees, said Monday that the village only offered to not build on the spit and to require a 100-foot setback from the shoreline elsewhere. He said that the state Department of Environmental Conservation requires homes to be 100 feet from the water anyway, so the Trustees would not win anything in the deal.

The Trustees noted that property owners whose land was left underwater for months after the storm did not lose the deeds to their parcels. They say that, by the same logic, the Trustees should not lose control of bay bottom just because new dry land suddenly formed on top.

“We would all like to leave office with the same amount of land, if not more, than when we were first elected,” Shultz said.

He said it is also important to the Trustees that their board retains control of the disputed land because the area is essential for piping plover nesting and horseshoe crab breeding. “We are very concerned about more houses being built that close to the water and the septic waste that accompanies them,” he said.

But Vegliante sees the Trustees' motivations as nefarious. "These guys are loose canons,” the mayor said. “They should be spending money on putting clams in the bay, not on lawsuits."

Trustee Ed Warner Jr. countered that if Moriches Bay is too polluted by septic waste from new homes in West Hampton Dunes to support a shellfish population, there is no point to seeding the bay.

With reporting by Erica Jackson.