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More important but less celebrated, Pierrepont then shifted his pitch to promise that the neighborhood character would be backed up by a legal guarantee. Only dwelling houses would be allowed — no rear-lot cooperages or blacksmith shops mixed in with residential uses. The homes had to be made of brick, with slate or metal roofs […] More
The aide, Timothy Pearson, was accused of harassing and retaliating against a second police sergeant under his watch.One of Mayor Eric Adams’s closest confidants was sued on Wednesday for the second time in a month over accusations that he harassed and retaliated against a New York Police Department sergeant he oversaw.The confidant, Timothy Pearson, was so prone to sexually harassing women that he was secretly placed under watch to try to prevent him from being alone with female colleagues, the suit says.The allegations, made by a retired sergeant, Michael Ferrari, in a complaint filed Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, support similar accusations by one of Mr. Ferrari’s former colleagues in the unit, Roxanne Ludemann.Ms. Ludemann filed suit against Mr. Pearson last month, alleging that he often put his hands on female colleagues and retaliated against those who complained.Ms. Ludemann retired in January after she said she was subject to harassment and retaliation. Her departure came roughly seven months after Mr. Ferrari retired; he said in the lawsuit that Mr. Pearson’s harassment and retaliation had effectively ended his career.Mr. Ferrari also asserted that Mr. Pearson was privately given the nickname “Crumbs” when he expressed anger after a contractor had been paid.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The deal, which could be announced in coming weeks, would bring an end to one of the last major cases stemming from a horrific sports scandal.The Justice Department is nearing a $100 million settlement over its initial failure to investigate Lawrence G. Nassar, the former U.S.A. Gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexually abusing girls under his care, according to people familiar with the situation.The deal, which could be announced in coming weeks, would bring an end to one of the last major cases stemming from a horrific sports scandal, with around 100 victims in line to receive compensation.The approach of a settlement comes two and a half years after senior F.B.I. officials publicly admitted that agents had failed to take quick action when U.S. national team athletes complained about Mr. Nassar to the bureau’s Indianapolis field office in 2015, when Mr. Nassar was a respected physician known for working with Olympians and college athletes. He has been accused of abusing more than 150 women and girls over the years.The broad outline of the deal is in place, but it has not yet been completed, according to several people with knowledge of the talks, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss continuing negotiations.The details of the settlement deal were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.It would be the latest in a series of big payouts that reflect the inability of institutions to protect hundreds of athletes — including the Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman — from a doctor who justified his serial sexual abuse by claiming he was using unconventional treatments.In 2018, Michigan State University, which employed Mr. Nassar, paid more than $500 million into a victim compensation fund, believed to be the largest settlement by a university in a sexual abuse case. Three years later, U.S.A. Gymnastics and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee reached a $380 million settlement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Millions in Sackler donations sat dormant, rising in value as the opioid epidemic raged and as other institutions distanced themselves from the makers of a notorious painkiller.The National Academy of Sciences is asking a court to allow it to repurpose about $30 million in donations from the wealthy Sackler family, who controlled the company at the center of the opioid epidemic, and to remove the family name from the endowment funds.The petition filed by the Academy in Superior Court in Washington, D.C., Thursday aims to modify the terms of the donations so the institution can use them for scientific studies, projects and educational activities.The move follows a report in The New York Times last year that examined donations from several Sackler members, including an executive of Purdue Pharma, which produced the painkiller OxyContin that has long been blamed for fueling the opioid crisis that has claimed thousands of lives.“The notoriety of the Sackler name has made it impossible for the Academy to carry out the purposes for which it originally accepted the funds,” Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a statement released on Thursday.Daniel S. Connolly, a spokesman for the Raymond Sackler family, said it supported the National Academies in “using the funds as they see fit” and would have supported the change.“We would have said yes if we’d been asked, just as we will still say yes despite this unnecessary court filing and false assertions about us,” Mr. Connolly said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A Tesla driver’s family had sought damages for the 2018 crash, which happened while the carmaker’s driver-assistance software was in use.Tesla on Monday settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker’s driver-assistance software for the death of a California man in 2018, averting a trial that would have focused attention on the company’s technology several months before it plans to unveil a self-driving taxi.The trial stemming from the death of Wei Lun Huang, an Apple software engineer who went by Walter, was scheduled to start Monday with jury selection. The case was one of the most prominent involving Tesla’s Autopilot software, attracting significant public attention and prompting an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.Terms of the settlement with Mr. Huang’s children and other members of his family were not disclosed, and Tesla filed court documents seeking to prevent them from being made public.Testimony in the trial would have put Tesla’s autonomous driving software under close scrutiny, further fueling a debate about whether the technology makes cars safer or exposes drivers and others to serious injury or death.Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, has said the company’s self-driving software will generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. Investors have used his claims to justify the company’s lofty stock market valuation. Tesla is worth more than any other carmaker even though its shares have plunged in recent months.Mr. Musk said on X last week that Tesla would introduce a self-driving taxi, Robotaxi, in August. If Tesla has in fact perfected a vehicle that can ferry passengers without a driver — which many analysts doubt — the development will help answer criticism that the company has been slow to follow up its Model 3 sedan and Model Y sport utility vehicle with new products.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The New Jersey casinos are the last large refuge for smokers in the Northeast, but some employees say their health is at risk.Atlantic City casino workers have tried unsuccessfully for years to persuade New Jersey lawmakers to outlaw smoking on gambling floors. On Friday morning, they took their efforts to court.In a lawsuit filed in State Superior Court in Mercer County, groups representing thousands of casino employees accused state legislators of giving special treatment to casino owners by allowing them to let people smoke inside their facilities. The state has allowed casinos to “knowingly force employees to work in toxic conditions,” the workers argued in court documents, and as a result, casino workers have experienced “life-threatening illness and death.”“Pretty much the worst thing we hear on this job is, ‘Can I have an ashtray?’” Lamont White, who has worked as a card dealer at numerous Atlantic City casinos since 1985, said in an interview. “Pretty much every worker in New Jersey is protected, except for casino workers.”The lawsuit was filed against Gov. Philip D. Murphy and the state’s acting health commissioner, Kaitlin Baston. It asks the court to strike down the legal loophole exempting casinos from the statewide ban on indoor smoking.Most states with legalized gambling prohibit smoking inside casinos. Even in states where it is allowed, some casino operators have banned it. Atlantic City, the nation’s most prominent gambling hub outside of Nevada, has become the last major refuge for smokers in the Northeast. (Most casinos in Las Vegas also allow smoking.)The issue has long been contentious in New Jersey. In 2022, when legislation to prohibit smoking inside casinos was considered, the organization representing casinos opposed it. It argued that such a ban would be bad for business, at a time when they were contending with the lingering effects of the pandemic as well as the prospect of new competition from casinos in or around New York City.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Mary Miss’s lawsuit claims that the planned demolition of her work violates the Visual Artists Rights Act, which empowers artists to save their work from destruction.The artist Mary Miss filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Des Moines Art Center to halt the planned destruction of a work of land art the museum commissioned her to create less than 40 years ago.The museum has said that the artwork, an environmental installation called “Greenwood Pond: Double Site” (1989-1996), has become a safety hazard and that repairing it is beyond the museum’s means. Demolition was slated to begin as early as Monday.The Art Center said Thursday that it had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.Miss’s legal action is the latest twist in an ongoing fight over the fate of “Greenwood Pond,” which has highlighted the difficulty of preserving ambitious public artworks — especially for smaller institutions operating in environments with changing weather conditions. In the weeks since the center’s plan became public, high-profile art-world figures including the collector Agnes Gund; the art critic Lucy Lippard; and the artists Laurie Anderson, Martin Puryear and Alice Aycock have written to the museum’s director, Kelly Baum, encouraging her to reconsider.Miss’s lawsuit claims that the planned demolition of “Greenwood Pond” violates the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, which empowers artists to protect their work from destruction if it is of “recognized stature.” The suit also contends that the museum violated its contract with the artist by failing to protect the work from the elements in the first place.Miss has asked an Iowa federal court to issue a temporary restraining order to keep the museum from draining the pond and dismantling the installation; a hearing on her request is slated for Monday morning. “The project is an original work of art and cannot be found anywhere else on planet Earth,” the lawsuit states. “Its destruction is its extinction.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
The six inmates at an upstate New York prison had said the eclipse was “a religious event that they must witness.” A statewide prison lockdown will remain in place.New York State’s corrections department agreed on Thursday to allow six men who had sued to be able to view Monday’s total solar eclipse to do so at the upstate prison where they are held, but the department stopped short of lifting a statewide prison lockdown during the eclipse.The men, inmates at Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County, filed a federal lawsuit last week arguing that the lockdown during the eclipse violated their constitutional right to practice their religion.Though they come from varying religious backgrounds, the men all believe that the eclipse “is a religious event that they must witness and reflect on to observe their faiths,” according to court documents.“This is a huge win for them — they are all ecstatic,” said Chris McArdle, one of the lawyers who represented the men. “Keeping our fingers crossed that it’s not cloudy or raining, they are going to be able to practice their sincerely held religious beliefs, which is the outcome we always wanted for them.”A spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said in a statement that the lawsuit had come “to an appropriate resolution.”Jeremy Zielinski, one of the men who filed the lawsuit, asked in January for permission to watch the eclipse from Woodbourne’s main yard. In his written request to prison officials, Mr. Zielinski, who is an atheist, said he believed eclipses were times to “celebrate science, reason and all things Atheism.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
