East Hampton trustees this month authorized an outside law firm to join with an attorney for East End fishermen to explore legal action against Amagansett homeowner groups who have blocked access to a nearly mile-long section of beach in their high-end community.
The trustees voted unanimously on Feb. 14 to authorize the firm to explore filing a class-action suit on behalf of town fishermen and citizens who have been denied access to the beach, or to join with a recently filed suit by the Town of East Hampton in the 13-year-old case, Daniel Spitzer, a lawyer for trustees, said during the meeting. Trustees, who make up a separate governing body from the East Hampton Town Board and oversee beach access and other water issues, did not rule out doing both.
Last year, Suffolk Supreme Court Judge Paul Baisley issued a restraining order requiring East Hampton Town to enforce a court ruling preventing trucks from driving on the stretch, known as Napeague Beach or “truck beach.” The 4,000-foot-long stretch of ocean beach has been fished using horse carts and trucks for centuries.
The order led 14 fishermen to an act of civil disobedience by driving on the beach, and their arrest in October, in what may become a test of the judge’s order, said Southampton lawyer Daniel Rodgers, who is representing the fishermen pro bono. Their case remains pending and, in an unusual move, lawyers for Amagansett homeowners sought to combine the criminal case with their civil action.
“This is about homeowners enriching themselves by stealing the right of all the fishermen and all the residents of this town,” Rodgers said Wednesday. “They got a judge to issue an illegal restraining order to keep [fishermen] off the beach.”
Stephen Angel, an attorney for some of the homeowners groups, didn’t return a call seeking comment Thursday.
Spitzer, during the February trustee meeting, said a new class-action suit against the homeowners could be filed on behalf of around 1,800 fishermen licensed by the town or even the entire 28,000 residents of the town, who have been blocked from driving on the beach.
“Frankly, we are thinking the proper way to go is a class-action case,” Spitzer told trustees. “There are 25,000 or so residents in your town and every one of them has a right to use that [beach].”
Rodgers said the class-action case could result in real damages paid to fishermen and other residents who he said have been harmed by residents’ efforts to restrict truck access, despite an 1882 deed in the parcel’s sale to developer Arthur Benson that created a “reservation” for fishing-related access.
Rodgers said the support of the trustees and Spitzer’s firm is “going to give us the horsepower that we need to go up against these wealthy homeowners.”
