Marom v. Town of Greenburgh

Background

Michael Marom, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a Third Amended Complaint against the Town of Greenburgh and Paul Feiner. He alleged that the defendants selectively enforced building and property rules against his partially completed home in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Marom alleged that the Town issued more than six violations against his property at Feiner’s request or direction. The alleged violations concerned building materials and construction equipment, the progress of construction, vacant structures, exterior walls, debris, and boats or trailers. Marom claimed the enforcement was intended to help his neighbors, the Gordons, and to financially pressure him. He also alleged that two other nearby developments and the Gordons’ property were not cited for allegedly similar conditions.

The Town and Feiner moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. The court accepted the complaint’s well-pleaded factual allegations as true for purposes of deciding the motion, but explained that the allegations still had to make the claim plausible rather than merely possible.

Court’s analysis

Marom’s claim was based on selective enforcement under the Equal Protection Clause. To state that type of claim, he had to plausibly allege both that he was treated differently from similarly situated people and that the difference resulted from an improper purpose, such as discrimination, punishment for exercising constitutional rights, or malicious or bad-faith intent to injure. A class-of-one claim would require an even higher degree of similarity between Marom and the proposed comparisons.

The court concluded that Marom had not identified adequate comparisons. The Gordons’ alleged pile of cinder blocks was not sufficiently similar to the multiple violations for which Marom’s property had been cited and for which he was later found guilty after a town-court trial. The two other developments also were not proper comparisons because construction was active there, while Marom acknowledged that work on his property had stopped. The court further relied on the additional violations found at Marom’s property, including deteriorated scaffolding, unfinished exterior features, gravel, a trailer and cement mixer, and prolonged disrepair.

The court also found that Marom had not plausibly alleged an improper motive. Allegations that the Town wanted to appease a constituent or disliked the condition of the property did not, by themselves, show the required personal malice or bad-faith intent toward Marom. The court noted that Marom did not plausibly connect the garbage-related incident with Feiner to the enforcement actions. It also considered a transcript in which the Town Attorney said the goal was to have the construction completed rather than to impose additional fines. The court characterized pursuing compliance with property rules as a legitimate governmental objective.

Because Marom had already amended his complaint three times and had not corrected the deficiencies identified in the court’s earlier decision, the court found that allowing another amendment would be futile. The court declined to address whether Feiner was entitled to absolute or qualified immunity.

Disposition

Judge Judith C. McCarthy granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in its entirety. The court dismissed Marom’s Third Amended Complaint with prejudice and directed the Clerk to terminate the pending motion and close the case.