Taxpayers are now facing a bill topping $300,000 for private lawyers hired to handle four lawsuits accusing Timothy Pearson, a former top aide to Mayor Eric Adams, of sexually harassing a female employee and then retaliating against other staff who complained about his behavior.
The law firm hired by the city Corporation Counsel to handle these cases now represents not only Pearson and other named defendants but also several top level former or current city employees who are potential witnesses, including the mayor’s former general counsels, Brendan McGuire and Lisa Zornberg.
As a result, the firm, Wilson Elser has submitted invoices to the city Law Department seeking $336,000 for services rendered through last week. Of that, $86,000 has been paid while the rest is “under review,” a spokesperson for the Law Department told THE CITY.
The bills come as a result of what is reported to have been Adams’ personal decision to have the city foot Pearson’s legal bills in the four lawsuits, overruling the city’s former corporation counsel, who promptly resigned.
That decision is coming under renewed scrutiny in light of a report from the Department of Investigation last week that found Pearson abused his authority and provided false statements to the NYPD in connection with an altercation in which he assaulted two guards at a midtown migrant shelter. City rules bar the city from representing or paying to represent city workers if the conduct they’re accused of violates the rules and regulations all city workers must adhere to.
Pearson is a longtime close associate of Adams. The two served together in the NYPD and Adams appointed Pearson to a vaguely defined job as “senior advisor,” maneuvering to allow Pearson to simultaneously collect his police pension. Adams then put him in charge of a new unit monitoring the efficiency of millions of dollars in city contracts related to migrant shelters.
On more than one occasion, Pearson showed up at shelters for inspections unannounced and got into confrontations with security guards — culminating in the October 2023 melee at the Manhattan shelter.
He’s also under scrutiny in a federal corruption probe. In September, the FBI and DOI confiscated his phone and seized documents in his home in a probe of procurement corruption after one of the four lawsuits alleged Pearson told colleagues he needed to get his “crumbs” while overseeing shelter contracts. That investigation continues apace, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Throughout all of this Mayor Adams has consistently backed his longtime friend, most recently this week when a reporter asked about the DOI report. The mayor said his office was reviewing the report, then declared, “I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again: I know Tim to be an optimal professional.”
But the arrangement under which Wilson Elser was hired to represent current and former city employees in the Pearson-related suits has come under fire from critics who say it violates rules that determine which city employees are eligible for publicly funded lawyers when they’re charged with wrongdoing.
Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), has repeatedly assailed the decision to have the city pay, arguing that paying for Pearson’s lawyers in the sex harassment cases goes against the rule barring the city from representing city workers if the conduct they’re accused of violates the rules and regulations all city workers must adhere to.
Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) poses a question, May 1, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“We all know that Tim Pearson received a taxpayer-funded attorney because of his close friendship with Eric Adams,” Restler told THE CITY. “The Law Department should revisit this decision immediately because Tim Pearson should never have received a taxpayer-funded attorney in the first place. He has egregiously violated city rules and conducted himself in indefensible ways. He deserves no taxpayer-funded representation.”
Former Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix stepped down in June after Adams overruled her. Restler said he will question her successor, Muriel Goode-Trufant, about Pearson’s representation when she appears at a City Council budget hearing next month.
Attorneys for Witnesses
Pearson is the defendant at the heart of four lawsuits, all of which allege that in his role as a powerful mayoral aide, he harassed NYPD Sgt. Roxanne Ludemann, an aide in the Municipal Services Assessment, an ad hoc agency Pearson ran that monitored city contracts for waste and fraud.
Ludemann sued last March, followed by three NYPD cops who say they witnessed this alleged harassment, including a high-ranking chief. Their lawsuits corroborate Ludemann’s allegations, but also claim the department retaliated against them after they complained to high-ranking officials in the mayor’s office about Pearson’s behavior.
The defendants Wilson Elser represents include Pearson, five current or former top brass in the NYPD, the city Economic Development Corporation, which employed Pearson, and the City of New York.
Lawyer Lisa Zornberg attends a City Hall press conference announcing her role as chief counsel to Mayor Eric Adams, July 26, 2023. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The city is also paying the law firm to represent potential witnesses in the case, including former counsel McGuire and the former director of the Mayor’s Office of Risk Management and Compliance, Marjorie Landa. Ludemann alleges in her lawsuit that she reported her disturbing interactions with Pearson to Landa, who told her subsequently she’d informed McGuire about her situation. Ludemann says she then received no further response from either of them.
Wilson Elser is also representing Zornberg. THE CITY has reported that Zornberg repeatedly met with Pearson to discuss migrant contracts during the time he was monitoring these contracts at the mayor’s request.
Zornberg resigned in September not long after the FBI and DOI took Pearson’s phone. She has declined to discuss why she stepped down, but it’s been reported that she did so only after the mayor ignored her advice to fire Pearson and two other aides under investigation.
Law enforcement targeted Pearson in September after allegations surfaced in one of the sexual harassment lawsuits related to his involvement in shelter contracts. The suit described his interaction with colleagues while they were discussing the lucrative nature of such contracts.
According to the suit, Pearson said he was upset about a shelter on Orchard Beach that was built and never used. The contractor still got paid, which allegedly infuriated Pearson. The suit asserted that Pearson was angry because he wasn’t included in the plans to build the shelter, stating, “Do you know how these contracts work? People are doing very well on these contracts. I have to get mine. Where are my crumbs?”
THE CITY reported last year that Pearson delayed for months a contract to hire case workers at shelters, even after it had been approved by the agency in charge of the shelters.
Two weeks after Zornberg stepped down, Pearson resigned, stating in a letter to the mayor he was leaving for personal reasons.
Pearson is also being sued by the two security guards DOI found Pearson assaulted. During the visit, DOI found, Pearson refused to provide ID requested by the guards, shoved both of them, and then falsely claimed they’d accosted him to get them arrested.
The city-hired lawyers are not representing Pearson in that lawsuit, nor did they assist Pearson in the DOI investigation. The DOI report noted that Pearson ducked investigators looking into the confrontation with the guards, stating, “Despite several invitations to speak with DOI about the incident, both directly by mail and email and through counsel, Pearson did not respond.”
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