The Town of Hempstead has been held in contempt of the court by a state judge for failing to provide FOILed emails containing information about a Suffolk County lawsuit charging that a driver was improperly ticketed by school bus cameras.
According to court documents, the town had previously entered into an agreement to provide roughly 3,000 emails to Brooklyn-based law firm Aron Law PLLC, which had sued on behalf of its clients to obtain all emails in the town’s servers that contain the word “croce.”
Joseph Aron, an attorney on the case, said the firm had made this specific FOIL request to understand whether the town was issuing school bus camera violations with improper evidence after a 2023 ruling in the People vs. Croce case that reversed a Suffolk County driver’s school bus camera ticket. Aron said the town has only provided about a dozen emails, multiple copies of which were duplicates.
“What the court said in the Corce case was that they didn’t have sufficient evidence to justify these notices of liability that people are getting, these $250 tickets,” Aron said. “As far as we’re aware, the town continuously ran the program. Our contention was that they never had the right evidence, and it was unlawful from the get-go. But when the Croce case came out, it was a case everybody knew about.”
“Essentially, we wanted to know what they knew and when they knew it,” Aron continued. “We have a claim for fraud. For a fraud claim…there has to be some knowledge requirement. In other words, if they were intentionally tricking people into paying them while they knew they didn’t have the proper evidence, that would obviously, I think, substantiate our fraud claim.”
Brian Devine, Hempstead’s communications director, said new Town Supervisor John Ferretti was working to comply with the judge’s order to release the emails.
“Although the lawsuit began well before Supervisor Ferretti’s administration, once the supervisor became aware of this issue, he directed the town attorney’s office to release all the emails produced as a result of this FOIL, pursuant to the judge’s directive,” Devine said in a statement. “As such, the town will work to comply with the judge’s order.”
Ferretti was appointed when Don Clavin stepped down on Aug. 5 and reappointed on Sept. 16 following legal concerns surrounding the manner in which he was appointed.
The town has 60 days to comply with the judge’s order and anticipates fulfilling the request within that time period.
