Marom v. Town of Greenburgh

Background

Michael Marom sued the Town of Greenburgh and Paul Feiner under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal civil-rights statute that allows claims for violations committed under state law. Among other allegations, Marom claimed that the defendants discriminatorily enforced the Town’s building code against his property.

The defendants moved to dismiss the Second Amended Complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which permits dismissal when a complaint does not adequately state a legal claim. The court’s earlier order granted that motion in its entirety. It dismissed all claims with prejudice, except for Marom’s selective-enforcement claim, which it dismissed without prejudice. The motion addressed here concerned only reconsideration of the dismissal of Marom’s class-of-one claim.

Motion for Reconsideration

Marom moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), which permits a party to ask the court to alter or reconsider an earlier judgment or order. He argued that the court had wrongly relied on the fact that an out-of-town developer was not a protected class. He instead argued that he should qualify as a “class of one” because his house was singled out for demolition while no other house in town in similar condition was.

The court explained that reconsideration is an extraordinary remedy and generally requires the moving party to identify controlling decisions or facts that the court overlooked, an intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, or a clear error requiring correction to prevent serious injustice. A reconsideration motion may not be used simply to repeat arguments or present new arguments based on the same material.

Court’s Analysis

The court said it had already considered whether Marom could plead a class-of-one claim under the factors described in Village of Willowbrook v. Olech. It stated that it had not rejected the claim because an out-of-town developer was not a protected class. Instead, the earlier dismissal rested on Marom’s failure to plead sufficiently comparable persons or properties and his failure to plead facts showing that there was no reasonable basis for the alleged differences in treatment.

The court found that Marom had not identified any overlooked facts or controlling law. It also concluded that his new assertion about no other similarly situated house being singled out for demolition did not meet the very high similarity requirement for comparators in a class-of-one claim. In addition, the Second Amended Complaint did not rule out the possibility that there was a reasonable basis for the different treatment of Marom, his neighbors, and the two developers discussed in the earlier order.

Disposition

Judge McCarthy denied Marom’s motion for reconsideration. The Clerk was requested to terminate the pending motion, identified as Docket No. 71.