Drayton wrote a letter to the new judge, defending her actions. The body of her letter:
This letter is to respond to a letter dated September 22, 2010, to Judge Gilpatric from Robin Segal, the pro se Petitioner in the above-referenced Article 78, which has now been assigned to you.
Ms. Segal is correct that I asked her for an extension of time to answer or move and that she granted my request. I asked for the extension because the record was extensive and putting it in order, creating the index and copying it was going to take time, particularly because the matter had been under review for many years and the files needed to be carefully put in order, since they had been used by many people, with many FOIL requests from the public, including Ms. Segal. Another reason I asked for the extension was that I was going on vacation for two weeks, which I told her.
During my conversation with Ms. Segal, I suggested she speak to an attorney, and she has admitted she did so. I did nothing to suggest she should rely on me as her attorney or her advisor. My conduct was in complete compliance with the Rules of Professional Conduct, and in particular Rule 4.3
Nothing I did prevented Ms. Segal from acting within the period of the statute of limitations to submit an amended petition or commence a separate Article 78 proceeding based on the Planning Board issuance of the Special Use Permit and Site Plan approval for the project. Nor did the extension of time to answer function to bar her from adding the landowner or the applicant for the project as parties to this proceeding.
My obligation as the attorney for the Respondents in this matter was to seek the objectives of my clients through reasonably available means permitted by law and the Rules of Professional Conduct. Rule 1.1(c)(1). I made the motion to dismiss a flawed Petition on the simplest, most expeditious grounds, and met my obligation to my clients.
Ms. Segal is angry and disappointed, but she is mistaken both in blaming me for representing my clients and for implying that I had a duty to help her avoid a defect in her case. Instead, I had an obligation to prevent prejudice or damage to my clients. Rule 1.1(c)(2). Nothing I did was unethical in any way in my dealing with Ms. Segal.
Sincerely yours,
Grant & Lyons, LLP
by: Drayton Grant
I think there is not much more to do than to show you my response to the judge:
This letter is my response to Drayton Grant’s letter to you dated Oct. 4, 2010. Ms. Grant is attempting to avoid addressing my statements opposing her behavior in this case.
Ms. Grant is correct in that she requested an extension of three weeks on August 17, 2010, and this was in addition to the extra time I granted the respondents initially without even being asked. She is also correct that there were (and still are) many documents to put in order and this is why I specified some extra response time built right into my petition. However, Ms. Grant filed a motion to dismiss my petition, and in her words, she made this motion “on the simplest, most expeditious grounds.” I must ask, if the motion was as simple as my failure to name two additional respondents, why did Ms. Grant need SEVEN WEEKS to do this?
What Ms. Grant really did was conceal her true motives for requesting an extension, when she should and could have easily filed the motion to dismiss, even absent any extension. She concealed her plan to file a motion to dismiss behind the work of preparing the record, which she clearly did not need time to prepare the record in order to file the motion to dismiss, since the motion is before the Court and the record remains unprepared, and Ms. Grant is no longer complaining that she needs more time for any reason. This misrepresentation of fact was intentional on her part, for if she had filed the motion to dismiss quickly, I would have had time to amend my petition. She calculated this timeline and for this reason alone, grouped the motion to dismiss, which was the ONLY thing she filed, with the preparation of “the record.”
Ms. Grant violated Rule 4.1 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, TRUTHFULNESS IN STATEMENTS TO OTHERS. She knowingly made a false statement of fact to me by telling me that she needed seven weeks, when in reality she only filed a simple motion.
Furthermore, I have significant evidence to prove that Ms. Grant was not at all serious about completing the preparation of “the record,” either by the time she filed the motion to dismiss or soon thereafter, confirming and demonstrating that her stated reason was simply a cover to run out the clock on the statute of limitations before filing her simple motion to dismiss.
Immediately after Ms. Grant asked for the extension, the Woodstock Planning Board had a meeting, but the meeting agenda had been set, and on that previously set agenda there were only a couple of weeks’ of meeting minutes to approve, out of over a year of unapproved meeting minutes. Ms. Grant never said that I was in error in my understanding of her need for an extension.
The Planning Board, meeting only twice per month, and with an already crowded agenda, does make Ms. Grant’s task of preparing the record a longer one than one over which she had control. However, I am in possession of Planning Board agendas for the meetings of September 2, September 16, September 30, and October 7. All of these agendas including the approval of ALL outstanding meeting minutes, yet at each of these meetings, only a handful of meeting minutes were approved. This shows that there was in fact NO requirement to have this particular record “prepared” in order to respond to my petition.
Ms. Grant purposefully led me to believe, which belief I reiterated to Ms. Grant verbally and in an email, that the Planning Board’s slow process was the reason she needed the extension. Therefore, I relied upon her assertion. The DRAFT New York State
Ms. Grant is without a doubt guilty of causing my reliance on her stated motives for requiring an extension, and this directly caused the statute of limitations to run out. I did not look to for legal advice, but I did honestly and honorably rely on the truthfulness of her stated reasons for seeking more time. Her failure is an ethical one, and clearly violates the Code of Ethics. It should not be necessary for an attorney to point to a code of ethics and cite three sections that she did NOT violate. One would expect and demand that every single section of the Code of Ethics is NOT violated. The issue is the section that she did indeed violate.
Ms. Grant, in her letter to you, attempts to shift your attention away from her unnecessarily grouping her motion to dismiss with her rationale for an extension, and towards issues that have nothing to do with her offenses. I never looked to Ms. Grant to advise me about that aspect of my petition. Ms. Grant is deflecting my complaint about her ethics with irrelevant responses to non-issues.
Ms. Grant labels me angry and disappointed. She is right. I am angry that she acted unethically, and disappointed that the Town of Woodstock
I granted Ms. Grant an extension, but that extension was conditional on her honesty. I admitted that the Planning Board’s involvement would down her work, and this made clear that I understood that Ms. Grant’s need for an extension required the record, in some way, AND the Planning Board’s involvement in some way. Ms. Grant did not NEED an extension to file a motion to dismiss, as the fully prepared record was not required for her to do so, and the Planning Board’s involvement was not necessary for her to file the motion she filed. Nor would she have needed seven weeks or even four weeks to file a motion to dismiss on what she labeled “the simplest, most expeditious grounds.”
Because my extension to Ms. Grant was based on a misrepresented need, and because the motion to dismiss, which is all she filed, did not require the extension and could have been done prior to her vacation, I contend that Ms. Grant should not be entitled to this extension. I further contend that the extension I agreed to was conditional, since I reasoned out the need in my email and she did not tell me in any way that I was in error in my belief. I move that my extension to Ms. Grant be rescinded because it was obtained through the unethical behavior of misrepresentation. Therefore, Ms. Grant filed her “simplest, most expeditious” motion to dismiss late, and therefore her motion should be dismissed, and her failure to respond in any ethical way to my petition constitutes non-response, which is grounds for your honor to decide in favor of my petition.
I realize that my argument to reject Ms. Grant’s motion as a late one might seem like a stretch, however it is important to punish misrepresentation, not simply reset the score at zero and start over, giving Ms. Grant the opportunity to behave more honestly the next time around.
Your honor, I urge you not to toss out my petition and reward Ms. Grant for her trickery. My petition needs to be heard.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Robin Segal
Petitioner pro se
And that's where things are now, today, October 14, 2010.
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