With the Mayor’s posting of the following statement on the Village of Tuxedo Park’s official website, the Lindsay / Regna defamation lawsuit against Mayor David McFadden was settled and resolved. All parties including the Village of Tuxedo Park would have been better served if Mayor McFadden’s statement had been made a year ago. The Mayor posted the statement on 3/30/07.

Exhibit “A” Stipulation of Discontinuance 3/29/07

Statement

Mayor McFadden and Village residents Jake Lindsay and Peter Regna are pleased to announce that they have resolved the defamation of character lawsuit against Mayor McFadden that Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Regna filed in September 2006.  Mayor McFadden wishes to make clear that it was never his intention to question the integrity of Messrs. Lindsay and Regna or the PB/BAR, does not dispute the Board of Trustees’ determination that they and the PB/BAR acted properly at all times (see the public statement issued by the BOT dated February 21, 2007, on the Village website), and sincerely regrets any suggestion or inference to the contrary. Mayor McFadden notes that Messrs. Lindsay and Regna have contributed greatly to the Village through their years of service and the Village appreciates that service. 

The following is the public statement referred to above issued by the Board of Trustees in resolving the lawsuit against the Village of Tuxedo Park.

Exhibit “A” BOT Settlement Agreement 2/21/07

Public Statement

The Board of Trustees and Village residents Jake Lindsay and Peter Regna are pleased to announce that they have resolved the defamation of character lawsuit against the Village that Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Regna filed in September 2006.  In view of the issuance of this joint public statement, Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Regna have agreed to withdraw the lawsuit against the Village.  All parties agree that this resolution is in the best interests of the Village of Tuxedo Park and are pleased that Tuxedo Park residents and taxpayers will not further be burdened with the epense and disruption of this lawsuit.

The lawsuit arose from an item in the agenda for the January 18, 2006, Board of Trustees meeting and a subsequent “From the Mayor’s Desk” column on the Village website.  Those items concerned the decision by the Planning Board/Board of Architectural Review in October 2001 to allow an application by Jake Lindsay to the Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) for approval for sewer main extensions to serve three existing lots on Lookout Mountain Road, and its subsequent action in 2004 to defer consideration of the portion of the application by Tuxedo Partners, LLC for sewer main extensions to its proposed subdivision because of a moratorium of the DEC.  Peter Regna served as Chairman of the PB/BAR at the time and Jake Lindsay served as a Trustee and Deputy Mayor until June 2003. 

Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Regna asserted in the lawsuit that Mayor McFadden wrongly implied they had acted improperly as public officials in connection with the approval process for the sewer main extensions to the Lindsay lots and the Tuxedo Partners proposed subdivision, and that those statements impugned the integrity of Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Regna and damaged their professional and personal reputations.  The Mayor and the Village denied the material allegations of the lawsuit and denied that they defamed Mr. Lindsay or Mr. Regna.

Through this public announcement, the Board of Trustees wishes to make clear to the Tuxedo Park community that, after investigation, it sees no reason to believe that Mr. Lindsay or Mr. Regna acted improperly in any way in connection with the approval process for sewer main extensions for either the Lindsay lots or the Tuxedo Partners subdivision.  The Board of Trustees has, with the advice of counsel, recently reviewed the circumstances of the respective applications.  There were changes in circumstances during the more than two-year period that elapsed between the approval of the Lindsay application and the deferral of that portion of the Tuxedo Partners application including, among other things, deterioration in the Village’s compliance with its DEC wastewater permit.  In the opinion of the Board of Trustees, the changed circumstance as well as differences between the projects themselves explain the PB/BAR’s actions on these different applications and the PB/BAR had good reasons for taking the actions it did.
The Board of Trustees views the actions of Mr. Lindsay and Mr. Regna and the PB/BAR that are the subject of the statements at issue in the lawsuit as having been taken properly and in good faith and that any suggestion to the contrary would be regrettable.

Jake Lindsay, Peter Regna and the Board of Trustees all concur that official actions of the Village of Tuxedo Park should reflect the respect participants in Village governmental processes are owed and that political discourse concerning the Village of Tuxedo Park, including expressions of dissent from official actions, should be constructive and conducted with due civility. 

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