Did the City harm the 17,000 owners of properties they sent letters to, demanding they prove they shouldn't be charged the pied-à-terre tax? And should the City have to take their list of 900,000 expensive properties down? On Monday, Randy Mastro, Eric Adams's former first deputy mayor, reappeared in New York Supreme Court on Staten Island to argue the answer to both those questions is yes. Meanwhile, lawyers for the Mamdani administration defended their rollout of the endlessly hullabaloo-inspiring pied-à-terre tax, against the lawsuit Mastro filed last month.
Mastro first filed the suit on behalf of three plaintiffs: Simon Hedley, a Manhattan homeowner Hell Gate spoke to in August; and Rachel O'Brien and Carmine Morano, the wife and father of Staten Island Councilmember Frank Morano. Since then Mastro has added four more plaintiffs: real-estate scion Ken Fishel, Sotheby's broker Carla Stearns, and Steven and Sandra Shore, a married couple who are both real estate attorneys.