Amagansett Homeowners Call for New Contempt Charges, This Time Against Trustees Over 'Truck Beach' Protests

Attorneys for the Amagansett homeowners who have been locked in a 13-year legal battle with East Hampton Town and the East Hampton Town Trustees have asked a judge to charge the Town Trustees with contempt of court based on their “open rebellion” against an injunction barring vehicles from the beach near their homes, commonly referred to as “Truck Beach.”

Steve Angel, a Riverhead attorney who has represented five Beachampton property owners associations who sued to block 4x4 vehicle access to the beach by their homes in 2009, claimed that the Trustees should be held in contempt because of the actions of Southampton attorney Daniel Rodgers, who represents a group of fishermen that have mounted protests over the privatization of the beach and a court injunction barring 4x4 vehicles.

The East Hampton Town Board was held in contempt of court earlier this year, in part because Town Police officers allowed the protesters to access the beach, even though they then issued them summonses for trespassing.

Angel says that Rodgers is “co-counsel” to the Trustees and has “declared war on the court” in statements made outside Southampton Town Justice Court last month following the dismissal of trespassing charges against the fishermen.

Rodgers claimed that the court could not bar people from accessing the beach because of the provisions in an 1882 deed that the court said allowed access for “fishing and fishing-related purposes.” He invited people to drive onto the beach east of Napeague Lane at will — even handing out laminated cards that declared the bearer to be a resident of the town who was there to use the beach for fishing-related purposes. He said the protesting fishermen were planning to host “fishing clinics” at the disputed beach next spring that will be open to any town resident.

Rodgers “has acted as someone on a mission to defy the court’s authority, by taking to the airwaves, brazenly insulting the court … and, worse, by encouraging the public to violate the injunction in a show of civil disobedience,” Angel wrote. “While we anticipate the Trustees will try to distance themselves from their attorney’s rhetoric by arguing that his contempt of the court’s authority should not be attributed to them, the undisputed facts will show that … the Trustees did not discharge Rodgers or disavow him while he continued his campaign of public contempt for the court’s authority, and the Trustees have done nothing to counteract Rodgers’s contemptuous invitation to 28,000 residents of the town of East Hampton that they join him in defying the court’s orders and judgment.”

Following the November 7 filling, the Trustees’ clerk, Francis Bock, released a statement saying that Rodgers is not the board’s attorney on any matters. He also pointed out that the board issued a statement following the dismissal of the charges against the 14 fishermen and Rodgers’s calls for further disobedience that applauded the dismissal of the charges but reminded residents of the injunction and the ban on 4x4 vehicles on the disputed stretch of beach.

“The Trustees are not now nor ever been clients of Mr. Rodgers,” Bock said. “Also, the Trustees were not participants in the protest in any way. We have absolutely no place in that action … Clearly Mr. Angel has the two cases confused.”

Rodgers said that the homeowners and their attorneys are simply trying to bully East Hampton residents and their elected representatives into giving up the fight for 4x4 access. He said it has become a “free speech issue.”

“If the homeowners think they are going to bully us into silence,” he said, “they can go to hell.”