JC or Pope Francis? perhaps carpinello inquired or sought documents pertaing to andrew cuomo's opening of thegovernor's mansion on his easter sunday while the church of nassau otb is closed to the faithful?
A Wandering Dago food truck. | jacque and margie
Judge rules against 'Wandering Dago' quest for emails
ALBANY—The Cuomo administration will not be faulted for deleting emails sought in an ongoing lawsuit over a controversially named food truck, a federal magistrate has ruled Friday.
Lawyers for the Wandering Dago, a Schenectady-based food truck, filed suit last year against the state's Office of General Services for denying its application to park near the Capitol complex during lunch. The cart's owners also sued over their exclusion from the Saratoga Race Course, and won a $68,500 settlement from the New York Racing Association.
While “dago” is generally understood to be a slur on Italian-Americans, the cart owners insist it is nothing more than a tribute to their ancestors, who were paid “as the day goes.” The suit has become a quest to determine whether top state officials—including the Italian-American governor, Andrew Cuomo—ordered the rejection, and in doing so the cart's owners requested email correspondence among Cuomo's closest aides in the Executive Chamber and officials at O.G.S and the NYRA.
“The curious lack of knowledge or recollection by all of the OGS witnesses concerning how the decision to deny the 2014 application was made, combined with the evidence that high-level state officials—including the governor himself—were aware of Wandering Dago and had encouraged official action against it, gives rise to a reasonable inference that high-level state official had a hand in the 2014 application denial,” George Carpinello, the Wandering Dago's lawyer, wrote in a March 23 filing.
Carpinello's claims of spoliation came into particular focus amid recent debate over a state policy which automatically deletes emails after 90 days. The deletions were to be suspended in the event of pending litigation, and one witness in the 2013 lawsuit said he was “aghast” to learn his emails to Cuomo aides had not been preserved. After pressure, the policy was reversed last month.
State lawyers argued Carpinello was engaged in a “fishing expedition,” and said the Executive Chamber had no duty to preserve documents because it was never a party to the Wandering Dago's suit, which targeted O.G.S.
In a 42-page decision issued Friday, Magistrate Randall Treece ruled the state was under no obligation to preserve emails, that their deletion was not done intentionally and that Carpinello had failed to show they were relevant to his underlying claim.
“Considering that hundreds of lawsuits are filed daily against New York State, the same observations holds true for New York State and its global infrastructure that requiring each agency and thousands of officials to institute a litigation hold every time a party contemplates or even commences litigation against another agency would paralyze the State,” Treece wrote. “The attorney general had no reasonable notice that Liebman was or would be subject to litigation and hence no reason to intervene.
“The Plaintiff has failed to show that the missing evidence would have been favorable to it. The Plaintiff has also failed to demonstrate the level of prejudice that has been visited upon it by the destruction of these emails. To the extent some prejudice was foisted upon the Plaintiff, it is not severe enough to warrant sanctions. And where the destroyed evidence is of limited or marginal relevance, an adverse inference instruction is inappropriate,” Treece wrote. “Suggesting that the Governor or the Executive Chamber are the puppet masters pulling the proverbial strings of the marionette OGS agency is nothing but mere speculation and hyperbole.”
While his request for additional discovery was denied, Carpinello is still pressing ahead with his claim that O.G.S. improperly denied the Wandering Dago's application.
Here is Treece's ruling: http://bit.ly/1I2MhAO
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