The 14 East Hampton Town residents who were issued summonses for trespassing on the Napeague ocean beach popularly known as Truck Beach during a protest last October have a hearing date in Southampton Town Justice Court.
As East Hampton Town Justices Lisa Rana and Steven Tekulsky had recused themselves without disclosing a reason for recusal, the cases were transferred to the nearest adjoining jurisdiction.
The 14 cases will be heard on Oct. 18 at Southampton Town Justice Court in Hampton Bays.
When the residents — commercial fishermen and their supporters — drove a caravan of trucks and a dory across the 4,000-foot stretch of beach to protest a New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division panel’s February 2021 ruling that the beach is owned by landward residential property owners, their intention was for Marine Patrol officers to issue citations for trespassing, said their attorney, Dan Rodgers. The act of civil disobedience followed a similar action in June 2021, during which no summonses were issued.
The Appellate Division panel’s decision, finding that the property owners’ deeds extend to the mean high-water mark on the beach and that residents have no inherent right to drive or park vehicles there, overturned a 2016 Supreme Court decision that found that an 1882 deed in which the town trustees conveyed some 1,000 acres on Napeague to Arthur Benson reserved rights to town residents, including some public use. It was followed by a June 2021 injunction reiterating the Appellate Division panel’s decision.
The town posted signs on the beach indicating that vehicle access to the beach was limited to fishing and fishing-related purposes. But a modified judgment in April 2021 enjoined the town from issuing permits “purporting to authorize their holders to operate and park vehicles” on the beach deemed to be owned by the property owners’ associations.
In June of this year, State Supreme Court Justice Paul J. Baisley Jr. held the town and the town trustees in contempt and levied a nearly $240,000 fine for violating the 2021 court decision, and ordered the revocation of all beach driving permits issued by the town since Feb. 3, 2021 — the date that the Appellate Division determined that residents had no right to drive on that section of the beach at Napeague. The town and trustees had “clearly demonstrated an appallingly studied indifference and deliberate disobedience to the lawful and unequivocal orders of this court,” he wrote.
The 1882 deed “reserved to the inhabitants of the Town of East Hampton the right to land fish boats and netts [sic] to spread the netts [sic] on the adjacent sands and care for the fish and material as has been customary heretofore on the South Shore of the Town lying westerly of these conveyed premises.”
“All along, we have deliberately wanted a review as to what the reservation entailed,” Mr. Rodgers said on Monday. “The homeowners seem to believe that the reservation does not include trucks, yet in my mind, they simply made that up, the idea that trucks aren’t permitted. They can’t point to anything where it says no trucks. . . . So we’re simply saying, how about we have a judge make that decision? That is why we went to these efforts to be charged with trespass.”
Mr. Rodgers and his clients argue that trucks are simply the modern equivalent to the horses and carts used in 1882, when the reservation was established. The plaintiffs — property owners’ associations who sued the town in 2009 — focused less on fishing and more on what they said were dangerous conditions created by scores if not hundreds of vehicles driving on the beach, and their claim that beachgoers and their dogs relieved themselves on the beach and in the dunes, creating a public health hazard.
For many residents of the town, Truck Beach was a popular picnicking destination. Some of them testified to that during the 2016 trial, recalling driving and congregating there as far back as the 1960s and disputing the homeowners’ assertions.
Mr. Rodgers predicted that the trespassing charges will be dismissed, as to date none of the property owners have filed a complaint against those issued summonses. “We’re not going to be held hostage by these homeowners playing games,” he said. “If they don’t show up on Oct. 18 and the charges get dismissed, we won.”
Kenneth Silverman, the president of one of the property owners’ associations who has acted as a spokesman for the plaintiffs, did not return an email or text message seeking comment.
