Manhattan Judge Dismisses ‘Malicious Media Campaign’ $25M Tort Suit Against Alleged Holdover Tenant’s Lawyer
A Manhattan judge has rejected the claim that real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey waged a “malicious media campaign” aimed at “shaking down” a developer who is suing Bailey’s client, dismissing a $25 million suit lodged against the lawyer that said he’d committed abuse-of-process and tortious-interference torts.
The dismissal of the suit filed against Bailey and his 29-lawyer Manhattan firm, Adam Leitman Bailey P.C., appears to give some vindication to Bailey. He said publicly in May that Y. David Scharf, the Morrison Cohen litigator and chairman who was helping to litigate the tort suit, “cannot win this case under any circumstances, assuming all the facts in it are true, which they are not.
“I’d be more nervous,” Bailey said in early May in an interview with the New York Law Journal, “but [the lawsuit is] just harassment and bullying. There’s nothing close to abuse of process.”
And, he added, “It’s ridiculous.”
But Scharf and other lawyers working the case at the litigation firm of Morrison Cohen, who represent lawsuit plaintiff 215 West 84th St. Owner LLC, which is an arm of condo developer Naftali Group, have already filed a notice seeking leave to appeal the dismissal to the state’s high court, court records show.
The $25 million suit against Bailey, launched in May, had made headlines this spring for its unique factual makeup and legal theories. In the action, building owner 215 West 84th St. Owner, represented by Scharf, alleged that Bailey had “turned what should be a dispute settled according to the law” regarding an 84th Street “holdover tenant” being suing by the Naftali Group and represented by Bailey, “into a multi-national media circus.”