When Eric Adams was nonetheless mayor, town agreed to pay the attorneys representing senior aide Timothy Pearson in 4 lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and retaliation.
Quickly after Adams left Metropolis Corridor, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration abruptly reversed course, transferring to chop off all metropolis funding of Pearson’s protection. By then, the legislation agency Wilson Elser had racked up greater than $760,000 in payments defending the retired police inspector.
This week Pearson fought again.
On Thursday Peter Brill, a brand new lawyer representing Pearson, filed authorized papers demanding that town proceed paying for his authorized illustration, claiming that Steven Banks, Mamdani’s company counsel, had no authorized foundation to cease funding Pearson’s protection.
Pearson was one among Adams’ most infamous associates, a longtime pal of the mayor from their days within the NYPD who was in the end compelled to resign in early September 2024.
The resignation got here days after the FBI and town’s Division of Investigation hit him with a search warrant and confiscated his telephone in an ongoing probe of corruption within the high ranges of the Adams administration. That very same morning legislation enforcement brokers additionally seized the telephones of a number of different senior Adams aides, together with town’s first deputy mayor, colleges chancellor, deputy mayor for public security and police commissioner.
By then Pearson was dealing with a number of accusations, beginning with a DOI probe of an accusation that he’d slapped a safety guard whereas making an attempt to examine a migrant shelter in Manhattan in October 2023. The guard claimed Pearson grew to become irate and in the end violent after he was requested to current his identification. (DOI would later decide he’d abused his authority).
Then, in March 2024, lawyer John Scola filed the primary of 4 lawsuits in opposition to Pearson and town, accusing him of sexually harassing a feminine subordinate in his place on the metropolis Financial Growth Corp., the place Adams had tasked him with monitoring the rollout of city-funded shelters to accommodate the wave of migrants arriving in New York Metropolis.
The lawsuits charged that Pearson made inappropriate statements, then retaliated in opposition to the girl after she complained to her supervisors. Among the supervisors then alleged Pearson — utilizing his clout with the mayor — engineered demotions and undesirable transfers after they backed up her claims.
Underneath Adams, the Company Counsel instantly agreed to pay his authorized payments within the lawsuits, funding that’s solely allowed if town determines that the worker was “appearing inside the scope of his or her employment” and that the allegations had been “not in violation of metropolis guidelines and laws.”
In March, after Council Speaker Julie Menin questioned that funding throughout Banks’ affirmation listening to, the newly appointed company counsel notified Pearson town would now not pay his authorized payments. Banks declared that Pearson’s actions as described within the lawsuits “violated the principles and laws” of the company for which he labored, and that he was “not forthcoming or truthful” throughout an interview with the company counsel when he first requested taxpayer backing.
Quickly after, Wilson Elser requested the court docket for permission to withdraw as his counsel.
On Thursday Pearson’s new lawyer, Brill, demanded that the decide deny Wilson Elser’s withdrawal movement and require town to proceed funding his illustration. Brill contended that Banks had not supplied any particular examples of how Pearson had violated metropolis guidelines and has thus far revealed no proof that he’d lied to metropolis attorneys.
In papers filed with the court docket, Pearson denied the allegations spelled out in the lawsuits and stated, “I’ve cooperated totally with my attorneys in contesting these allegations” and “didn’t withhold any info throughout the interview” with the Legislation Division in 2024.
Pearson contended that “to strip that illustration from me based mostly on a termination letter that identifies no particular wrongdoing, no particular proof, no particular change in circumstances… would trigger me speedy and irreparable monetary and authorized hurt.”
The town can be a defendant within the Pearson lawsuits.
“We notified Wilson Elser on March thirteenth that we might now not pay for Pearson’s illustration,” Legislation Division spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci stated in a press release. “No funds have been made to the agency since that letter was despatched. Nonetheless, Wilson Elser continues to characterize the Metropolis of New York which can be a defendant in these issues.”
Pearson’s lawyer, Brill, didn’t return THE CITY’s name looking for remark.
