[This is] a tremendous turnout for something like this, and I really appreciate it.

My name's Jeff Glen. I'm a partner in DeForest & Duer, which is the law firm that is representing you folks in general land use issues since about September [1999], and obviously what brings us here tonight is where things are on the Southtown litigation.

There were two proceedings brought against RIOC, one of which also included claims against the City, the State agencies, and against the developer by two different groups of persons living on the Island. The two claims are in a form called an Article 78 proceeding. An Article 78 proceeding is a section of the State procedural statues, and it is the way in which one challenges an allegedly arbitrary or capricious governmental action or governmental action which was taken without appropriate legal authority.

Both petitions seek the same result, which is essentially the annulment of the RIOC resolution of last September [1999] which authorized the proceeding of negotiations between RIOC and the Related Companies toward a lease that would enable Related to build the Southtown plan. And the plan at issue was attached to the resolution.

Probably, although not necessarily so, the time to challenge that determination by RIOC ran 120 days from the effective date of the resolution. I say "probably, but not certainly," because there is an argument that that resolution is not a "final governmental action," and therefore a challenge to it is premature. However, if a court were to say that is a final governmental action and no challenge had been mounted within 120 days, then there would be no opportunity to try to attack in court the development of the Southtown plan that was approved last September.

Two timely petitions were brought, by two groups of persons here on the Island. One of them emphasizes in its argumentation issues involving view corridors and other claims of failure to be appropriate within the general design confines of the [General] Development Plan here on the Island. The other emphasizes environmental claims but both of them raise the issue that RIRA is raising (and I'll tell you how in a minute), which is that the plan, as approved, violates the General Development Plan [GDP] and the Ground Lease.

RIRA's position, as we have been instructed by Joan [Christianson, RIRA First Vice President, and Chair, RIRA Legal Action Fund Committee], and we did have one meeting a couple of months ago that I was at, RIRA's position is that it is vital to the development of this Island in an appropriate fashion that it be developed in conformity with the GDP and the Ground Lease, and if anybody wants to do something that is not in conformity with the GDP or Ground Lease, they have to change the GDP or Ground Lease, and the way you change it is set forth in the statute and the Lease itself.

Now, that is the argumentation that RIRA wishes to put in front of the judge who is going to hear both of these petitions. RIRA does not take a position in its presentation -- I'll tell you in a minute how we're doing the presentation -- doesn't take a position on the environmental issues per se. It may very well be that the claim that there are environmental problems that have to be dealt with may be correct, but that's not what is being argued in RIRA's papers.

So, what is RIRA doing?

RIRA is not -- did not file its own petition to challenge the September resolution. Those petitions were filed by two other organizations. If RIRA wished to file such a petition, it could have done so, but it would have been seeking the same technical relief, namely the annulment of the September resolution. The existence of the other two petitions, quite frankly, allowed RIRA, acting in this case through me, to try to have a meeting with the lawyer for RIOC to see whether there could be some discussion over a modification of the Southtown plan, as approved, without having to litigate. And there's no secrets on this: The big issue is building 1 [the northernmost building on the Manhattan side, just south of Rivercross], right?

Now, I did have a meeting, prior to our doing any legal work directed to this litigation, with Steve Kass, who is the lawyer for RIOC, and the meeting, although it was very polite and Steve and I have known each other for a long time, and we see other occasionally in various situations, nothing happened. There was no substantive discussion about any willingness on RIOC's part to modify any aspects of the Southtown plan. Basically, Steve's position was that the Southtown plan, in his view and in RIOC's view, is legal, that there is no legal need to modify it, that any attempts to modify it should be handled not through lawyers but through the normal political processes of the Island, and nothing happened and no further meetings were held.

OK. It became clear to the people that are instructing me, which is the Legal Committee, that if RIRA was going to have a position that was articulated institutionally or organizationally, to the courts, it would have to do so in the context of the two existing lawsuits. It was my advice that the best way to do that was for RIRA as an organization to seek to intervene in the existing lawsuits. "Intervention" is a technical term in the law. When a person or an organization seeks to intervene in a litigation, what one asks for is permission to participate in the litigation and to present one's legal and factual arguments as a party to the litigation, but you do not seek your own relief.

In some kinds of litigation, one can intervene and seek one's own relief, and I'll give you an example. Assume that there is a car crash, and one victim of the car crash begins a case. Another victim of the car crash could, if he or she wished, intervene in the first case and ask for their own relief. That's not the situation that we're talking about here. Here, we're talking about a challenge to a governmental action in which the relief that everybody requests is technically the same.

Now, what are the advantages and what are the disadvantages of RIRA participating by intervention? Because there are other things that could be done, and let me talk about some of the other things. One is seeking to participate as what's called a "friend of the court," or, in Latin, amicus curiae, which is what snooty people with law degrees say. An amicus curiae participation means that you write a brief in which you put forth a position and the judge, if the judge accepts the brief, and generally judges do, considers the arguments for whatever weight they intrinsically have. And that is not an unusual thing to do. It rarely is done at the trial court level. It's typically done at the appellate level. And, participating as an amicus curiae means that if the judge holds arguments or if the judge seeks to have witnesses, you are not participating as a party. So, for example, you cannot examine witnesses, you cannot put your own witnesses on, you typically don't have the right to argue to the Court. You put it in a brief. OK. That would be an approach.

The other end of the thing would be for RIRA to ask the judge to permit RIRA to be an additional plaintiff as an organization in the existing lawsuits. And RIRA has, as an unincorporated association, has what's called "standing" to bring a lawsuit. It's not that you can't do this. If RIRA were to participate as an additional plaintiff, several problems would arise. One is an artifact of time. If RIRA were to be a plaintiff -- in this case it's called a "petitioner" because we're in that kind of proceeding -- RIOC and the developer would have the ability to attempt to knock RIRA out of the case because RIRA didn't bring its case within the 120-day time period. It is my belief that RIOC would lose if they made that motion, for technical reasons. I don't think the time-bar problem would affect joining as a petitioner, but it would be a distraction, and you'd have to brief it, which means you'd have to pay for it.

Secondly, if RIRA were a petitioner, or to seek to be a petitioner, but were asking for the same relief, namely the annulment of the September determination, the judge, either on his own hook (the judge's name is Stanley Parness, incidentally; I'll tell you a little about him in a moment; the case has been assigned to Judge Parness) -- the judge could say, and might well say, "What do you I need you guys in this case for? I've already got two cases with petitioners; they're adequately represented by Counsel. I don't need more petitioners sitting here with the rights of parties." I don't see that there's any advantage to attempting to become a co-petitioner in the case, and there's the disadvantage of this time-bar problem or the redundancy problem.

Seeking to intervene is, in my view, an economic and appropriate approach. As an intervenor, what one does is make application to the Court for permission to intervene as a party in support of, in whole or in part, the position of either the plaintiff or the defendant. (You can be an intervenor for the defendant. It doesn't happen very often, but technically it's possible.)

In this situation, in which two sets of petitioners have filed what I believe to be good papers, emphasizing two different aspects of issues raised by RIOC's action, but neither of them, at least in their papers, emphasizing the GDP and Ground Lease issues as issues of general concern across the Island, not just on Southtown, but for Southpoint, for Octagon, for all the issues, for RIRA, which I believe will be perceived as what it is, which is an organization of wide membership across the entire Island, for RIRA to be taking the position that whether or not the positions articulated by the petitioners have strength (and my own view is that they do), RIRA wants to make a broader presentation on the general issue of compliance with the General Development Plan and the Lease. Now, my personal view is that when you have articulate and well-presented positions by the original petitioners, coupled with intervention by a broad-based organization, that there is a psychological advantage that is gained by having the positions presented in both those ways. I can't prove that. It's my experience.

Judge Parness, who has served on the Appellate term, which is one of the intermediate appellate courts, and then chose to go back to trial work because he liked it better, is an intelligent and savvy guy with substantial political experience. Two things follow from that, in my view. One is that whether RIRA were a friend of the court, a plaintiff, an intervenor, or just a witness, I think he'd pay attention to what RIRA has to say, because he's a savvy guy.

Secondly, I think that he understands that if the community organization representing Roosevelt Island, takes the position and emphasizes one of several significant issues, that means he should address those issues. And I think it's important that the General Development Plan and the Ground Lease issue get addressed, because I think... one of two things.

If we're right, and I believe we are, I think the judge will determine that you cannot build developments on this Island that are not permitted by the GDP and the Ground Lease, without changing the Lease. I'm not saying to you that I feel equally strongly that the judge will say that this particular plan, on its face, violates the GDP -- I think it does but that's a slightly different question -- it is terribly important for RIRA when we get to the Southpoint litigation that's coming down the pike some day, that there be established precedent that you cannot build anything on Southpoint without changing the GDP and the Ground Lease, [because] Southpoint isn't supposed to be built. So that the underlying, fundamental issue, on GDP and Lease compliance, I think, is very important. And I believe that if RIRA has a separate voice in that courtroom, we are likely to get that issue dealt with in this case. And I think it's important to do so.

The other advantage to being an intervenor, but this is also true if you were coming in as a petition, is that in the event that the judge were to find against the petitioners, RIRA as either an intervenor or as petitioner, has a right to take an appeal. And that may or may not be of some importance, but I want to make it clear, that's not a distinction between being a party and being an intervenor; you get it either way.

Now, timing: The two current cases have been both assigned to the same judge. They have not been consolidated yet, for argument, although everyone anticipates they will be. RIOC's papers are, at the moment, due on April 14, and I have been told that nobody expects them not to file. We have determined that we wish to have our intervention motion before the court prior to the filing of the RIOC papers for the following reason: If we have our intervention motion heard on the (what's call the) return date (in the technical terms), which is, at the moment, I think, April 21... the RIOC papers are due on the 21st and then there's a return date when everything is due in... I believe the chances are extremely high that the judge will permit us to intervene and will read our papers, but I believe it is also likely that the judge will then say, "Thank you very much, I understand your position, you are certainly welcome in the courtroom on the day of argument, but I don't want to see any more papers from you because all the papers are closed." (On the return date, everything's supposed to be in.)

We don't know what position RIOC is going to take on a large number of issues, because... I'll give you an example. It may very well be true that the September resolution is not a "final determination" by a government, as I mentioned earlier on. I believe it is quite unlikely that RIOC is going to raise that issue because I think that RIOC and the developer want to move this project along if they can do so. So I think that they are going to waive that defense. But I can't be sure. If they choose not to waive that defense, then there's some strategic issues that have to be faced both by the petitioners and by RIRA, as to how we deal with that. If we have our motion to intervene before RIOC papers come in, then anything that's in the RIOC papers that's a surprise, we have the opportunity to say to the Judge, "We want to answer those papers." Consequently, it makes a lot of sense for us to be doing that.

Now that leads to a question which has been raised, which is, how are we going to pay for all this, how much is it going to cost, because what I've just suggested is, "More paperwork." Now, in my view this issue has nothing to do with whether or not RIRA is an intervenor or a amicus curiae, or an additional participant. I don't think it makes any change, because the paperwork is going to be the same to present the RIRA position. Obviously, it would make a difference if RIRA decided it had no independent position at all. And, this was in the paper, and it was accurately reported, we are on a $600-a-month retainer, we're Counsel on all land-use issues, which is, let me tell you, one of the big, dumb deals I made last year. We agreed, if you guys were involved... the reason you got us in the first place was because there was that circus back in December where we learned that Marriott is going to put up a 4,000-unit hotel plus a ski area or something, and we were really worried at that point that we had to go, might be having to go to court very quickly to knock down Southpoint. That appears to have not happened. But in the meantime, Southtown came around the corner, and a determination was made that RIRA had a position to take, and it was not to support the Southtown project that was approved back in September.

At that time, since it was perfectly clear to us in our discussions when we did the retainer agreement that while the impetus for getting Counsel was the Southpoint problem, that we said we will take RIRA's position, whatever it turns out to be, in the Southtown litigation, and we will cap our fee at $10,000, and we will use three months of the retainer as part of the $10,000, so March-April-May is being applied to that. As of the moment, you know where we are. We've spent about six to seven thousand dollars of time, and we are within about 48 hours of having a proposed final version for Joan to take a look at. We are looking for going to Judge Parness on either Friday or Monday with application to have the intervention motion heard a week from Friday, which would be [April] 7th, so that the papers are in front him a full week before the RIOC papers are in. We are committed to representing you through the trial level process up to, but not including, fact-finding hearings if they exist. I mean. God knows what happens at that point. It may be that RIRA doesn't want to participate in fact-finding hearings. It is very unusual in these cases to have fact-finding hearings. I believe it is extraordinarily unlikely that we will come in below $10,000, because we're buttin' up on it pretty soon. I will participate in oral argument twice, I hope. Once is a week from Friday when I assume there will be opposition by RIOC to our filing anything at all, and the other is whenever the final argument is heard on the case. It is my belief that we will want to put in some rebuttal to the RIOC paperwork that will be addressed to the GDP and lease issues, and we are committed to do that.

So that's where things stand at the moment. And I think I've probably lectured you long enough, so... here I am [for questions].