Update, March 6, 11 a.m.: Sag Harbor Village and the Sag Harbor Police Department have until April 9 to convince New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti that they have good reason to release video footage of Justin Timberlake taken during his June 2024 drunken-driving arrest.
According to court documents filed Thursday, Justice Farneti granted a temporary restraining order barring the village from releasing the videos. He also said that the court would review the footage to “assess the privacy interests at stake” before deciding on whether to make the order permanent.
Original, March 5, 10 a.m.: The ghost of Justin Timberlake’s adjudicated June 2024 drunken-driving arrest in Sag Harbor resurfaced this week, with the pop star’s lawyers fighting the release of video footage from the incident.
On March 1, Mr. Timberlake’s Sag Harbor lawyer, Edward Burke Jr., asked police not to release what has been described as over eight hours of video footage, which includes his roadside sobriety test and subsequent arrest. Sag Harbor officials had been poised to release the video — which had been requested by Brendan O'Reilly of the Express News Group under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).
“Disclosure of these materials would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” Mr. Burke contended in a letter to Village Police Chief Robert Drake.
This week, the village’s outside counsel, Vincent Toomey, replied in a statement that “The Village had indicated its intention to comply with the FOIL request by releasing some of the footage, with certain redactions, based upon personal privacy and law enforcement interference exemptions.”
Simultaneously, Michael Del Piano, another of Mr. Timberlake’s attorneys, filed an Article 78 lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Riverhead to block the public from seeing the videos and asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the village. Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the Village of Sag Harbor, the Sag Harbor Police Department, and Chief Drake individually.
“The footage at issue depicts Petitioner in an acutely vulnerable state during a roadside encounter with law enforcement, capturing intimate details of Petitioner’s physical appearance, demeanor, speech, and conduct during field sobriety testing, the subsequent arrest, and Petitioner’s confinement following arrest over the next several hours,” according to the filing on behalf of Mr. Timberlake.
Mr. Burke’s office said he would not comment further on the ongoing matter.
Mr. Timberlake took a plea deal on the misdemeanor charge in September 2024 and was sentenced to a $500 fine, 25 hours of community service, and a license suspension. Carl Irace, the Sag Harbor Village justice who handed down the sentence, declined to comment Tuesday on the merits of the lawsuit.
Chief Drake did not return requests for comment, but in subsequent calls with Mr. Toomey reportedly said that village officials have been directed to refer to the prepared statement. In the meantime, Mr. Toomey and the village will formally respond to the lawsuit.
On Monday, during a conference in his chambers, Justice Joseph Farneti told lawyers for both sides to try to come to an agreement outside of court.
