Blog

One of the largest auto dealers in Massachusetts has sued his co-owner and financial backer, claiming the firm engaged in “serious financial misconduct” and tried to push him out after he complained to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a complaint filed in Norfolk Superior Court last Friday, David Rosenberg, chief executive of Prime Automotive Group, accused the New York investment firm GPB Capital Holdings of running a Ponzi-like scheme, in which it used money from investors to prop up the performance of auto dealerships it owns, as well as to finance payments to other investors.

Before pleading guilty to embezzling $58 million, real estate developer Michael D’Alessio was the portrait of generosity.

He hosted friends at his $13 million home in Water Mill, LI, to play tennis and feast on meals cooked by his private chef. The father of five picked up tabs at fancy Italian restaurants and doted on his disabled daughter.

WHITE PLAINS – A local developer and his companies have been sued by investors for allegedly misappropriating money that was meant for residential projects in Scarsdale, as well as on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Long Island.

Nearly 20 investors, including some with ties to Westchester, have filed at least seven lawsuits against Michael D’Alessio and his company, Michael Paul Enterprises of White Plains, as well as several other entities under D’Alessio’s control.

Three months after investors sued struggling White Plains developer Michael P. D’Alessio over failed Manhattan condominium projects, a bank and more investors have filed lawsuits.

The investors are demanding at least $17 million in damages and a court order stopping D’Alessio from selling or transferring the properties.

Onyx Equities is preventing a college from subleasing space in Chelsea to keep the building open for its
preferred tenant, according to a lawsuit filed against the company.

The lawsuit, filed by the Charand Real Estate Associates entity Overtime Properties LLC against Onyxaffiliated 320 West 31st Associates LLC, centers on the building at 320 West 31st Street, the former home of TCI College Campus. Charand has owned the property for decades and leased it to TCI College in 1997, but the school stopped paying rent in March, after which Charand began eviction proceedings, the suit says.

Several investors have sued companies run by White Plains developer Michael Paul D’Alessio for allegedly stopping payments on three midtown Manhattan condo projects.

The investors are demanding that they be allowed to inspect the books and records for the projects so that they can trace the use of funds and understand why debt on the properties has increased.

By Joshua Verna

Litigators responding to document requests in federal court do so in many instances without a comprehensive understanding of the applicable rules. For many years, the vagarities in the language of the federal rules resulted in practicing litigators using pre-formulated responses to document requests, often containing broad reaching...

A special litigation committee cannot be used to determine the fate or direction of derivative claims brought on behalf of a New York limited liability company, unless its use is expressly written into the operating agreement, a Manhattan appeals court has ruled in an important decision of first impression.

“Article IV of the New York LLC Act makes clear that the operating agreement of an LLC governs the relationships among members and [their] powers and authority,” wrote a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, in a ruling that has changed the course of a legal battle, begun in 2011, over revenues springing from a luxury condominium development found in Manhattan’s opulent Tribeca neighborhood.

A New Jersey federal judge has given the green light to a lawsuit that alleges a prominent auction house sold sports memorabilia supplied by former hip-hop star Peter J. Nash even though the firm’s president knew there were questions about its authenticity.

The suit, filed last year by Westchester collector Corey Shanus, claims that Robert Edward Auctions and its president, Rob Lifson, knew items supplied by Nash — best known as “Prime Minister Pete Nice” of the early 1990s group 3rd Bass (pronouced “base”) — were not authentic but allowed Shanus to purchase them anyway.

A baseball-memorabilia collector is crying foul.

Corey Shan us, a Westchester lawyer who has amassed a treasure trove of artifacts from the national pastime, filed a $600,000-pfus fraud suit yesterday against a dealer he claims duped him into buying two fake balls.