28 THE QUEENS COURIER • SEPTEMBER 25, 2014 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com BP Katz holds hearing on Bayside car dealership BY ERIC JANKIEWICZ @ericjankiewicz ejankiewicz@queenscourier.com Members of the Bayside community urged Borough President Melinda Katz to uphold Community Board 11’s decision to remove a Star Toyota and Scion dealership from the area during a hearing on the morning of Sept. 18. “For 40 years, this business has been a bad neighbor,” a Community Board 11 member said. “There’s excess noise in the night and in the day. Unlicensed cars constantly speed through the neighborhood, blowing every stop sign.” Katz didn’t make a decision during the meeting, but she remained skeptical that the dealership was sincere about responding to the community’s complaints about trash, broken sidewalks and a fence in need of repair. The dealership’s manager, Michael Koufakis, didn’t attend the meeting but his lawyer, Todd Dale, said that all of the issues that the community raised were addressed. “When presented with these problems, we took care of it,” he said, referring to the broken sidewalks and fence and all of the trash in the area. “I fi nd that, as borough president, people clean up right before these meetings and then they go back to their bad habits afterwards,” Katz said. According to Katz’s spokesman, the borough president will make a decision to either allow the variance to be renewed or will echo Community Board 11’s decision. She plans on making her decision before the case goes to the Board of Appeals (BSA), the last stop before a fi nal decision is made. The variance allows the business to operate in a residential zone as long as it cooperates with the community board. Neighbors of the dealership hope that the BSA and Katz will reject the variance application. Rennie Xosa lives behind the dealership’s parking lot. He, as well as community board members, said that the lot is used by the dealership to showcase cars to customers, an act that Borough President Melinda Katz held a hearing to consider community complaints of a Bayside dealer. Legally Speaking By: Scott Baron, Attorney at Law FELL DOWN THE SHAFT Q: My building has an elevator. To enter the cab, I must pass through two doors: the elevator door on my floor and the door to the cab itself. After the cab is stopped, the door on my floor will unlock. I can open it if I wish to get in the cab. When the cab is not stopped at my floor, a safety device – called an ‘interlock’ – locks the floor door. The purpose of the device is to prevent me from falling down the elevator shaft. One day, erroneously believing that the cab was stopped on my floor, I pulled the door to the elevator, stepped forward and fell down the shaft. Obviously, the device had failed to work. A maintenance man for the elevator service company thinks that the device failed to work properly because it was damaged by fluids that had entered the device. Occasionally, individuals relieved themselves in the elevator. Also, mop water would penetrate the device. A:Both the landlord and the elevator service company had a duty to maintain the elevator, particularly the device. This is true both at common law and under Administrative Code of the City of New York § 27-994(e), which requires your elevator to have a hoistway-door interlock. The landlord and company were negligent in failing to maintain the device. Their negligence caused your accident. For a witness to be qualified as an expert, he must possess the requisite skill, training, education, knowledge or experience from which it can be assumed that his opinion is reliable. It is questionable whether the maintenance man possessed such skill, knowledge and experience. Moreover, your own expert might testify that fluids penetrating the device should not have caused this accident. If fluids had penetrated the device, an electrical short circuit would have caused the elevator to shut down. The device can only have failed because it was not maintained properly. Advertorial The law responds to changed conditions; exceptions and variations abound. Here, the information is general; always seek out competent counsel This article shall not be construed as legal advice. Copyright © 2014 Scott Baron & Associates, P.C. All rights reserved. 159-49 Cross Bay Boulevard, Howard Beach, New York 11414 1750 Central Park Ave, Yonkers, NY 10710 718-738-9800, 914-337-9800, 1-866-927-4878 would be illegal under the business’ zoning rules. “I have this beautiful backyard but I often can’t use it because there are people over there checking the car alarm system, honking the horn, testing how THE COURIER/Photos by Eric Jankiewicz loud the radio goes and all of these other things that shouldn’t be going on there,” Xosa said. “I won’t let these people kick me out of my own neighborhood. I’m staying here and fi ghting them.”
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