Supreme Court Justice Wayne M. Ozzi and his wife, Lucy, are listed as owners of a one-family home in Annadale on the Department of Finance’s fiscal year 2027 supplemental property roll. The city values the property at $1.109 million. A 2018 City Register filing in a separate real-estate transaction also lists the same address for Wayne Ozzi.
Ozzi’s home is well below the $5 million threshold at which one-, two- and three-family homes can potentially be subject to the new surcharge on non-primary residences. Condos and co-ops can potentially qualify beginning at $1 million. amNewYork has found no evidence that Ozzi received one of the roughly 17,000 notices DOF sent to owners it identified as potentially subject to the surcharge.
The petition itself confirms those $5 million/$1 million thresholds and makes clear that the plaintiffs are challenging the rollout, not the underlying state law.
But his property appears in the Tax Class 1 portion of the same supplemental roll whose publication is being challenged in the lawsuit before him.
Justice Ozzi’s own inclusion on the roll is not mentioned in his written order. His chambers referred questions about the matter to the state Office of Court Administration.
OCA did not return a request for comment at the time of publication. A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department did not have an immediate comment.
On Monday, Ozzi granted a temporary restraining order directing the city to stop posting or otherwise making the supplemental roll publicly accessible. His order also temporarily barred the city from taking further action based on the roll or mailed notices without first making individualized determinations and providing the required notice, and from enforcing the mailed-notice deadline.
Almost immediately, the city filed an affirmation stating that it intended to seek permission to appeal, which the city says triggered an automatic stay of Ozzi’s order. A City Hall spokesperson told amNewYork the rollout will continue as planned.
Former First Deputy Mayor under Eric Adams Randy Mastro, who is representing the homeowners behind the lawsuit, said in a Tuesday filing that the city was wrong to suggest that its appeal stayed Ozzi’s order, citing legal precedent in the appellate division. He said the city would be held in contempt if it continued to roll out the tax, but the city has pointed to civil practice rules stating that when a temporary order halts a government action, the government making a move to appeal stays the order.
The disputed supplemental roll, meanwhile, remained publicly available on the Department of Finance’s website Tuesday afternoon.
Disclosure question
The lawsuit, brought by Rachel O’Brien, Carmine Morano — the sister and wife of Republican Council Member Frank Morano — and Simon Hedley, does not challenge the legality of the surcharge itself. Instead, the plaintiffs contend the city improperly implemented it by publishing the broad supplemental roll and sending notices to thousands of property owners.
Their petition argues that publication of the roll caused “mass confusion” and “invited public scrutiny and ridicule.”
City lawyers have countered that the supplemental roll was required as part of administering the surcharge and that its breadth reflects the law’s definition of covered property, which includes all non-vacant Tax Class 1 properties. They also noted that the information published about the plaintiffs was already available through the city’s regular property assessment records.
The same is true of Ozzi’s Annadale home, which appears in both the city’s regular fiscal year 2027 Tax Class 1 records and the supplemental roll.
An earlier City Register filing also ties Ozzi personally to the Annadale property. In a 2018 real estate transaction involving a different Staten Island property, Wayne Ozzi listed the Annadale home as his address and signed the accompanying filing.
Stephen Louis, a distinguished fellow at New York Law School’s Center for New York City and State Law and a former longtime city Law Department attorney, said Ozzi’s inclusion among such a large group of property owners did not, in his view, require the judge to step aside or disclose it to the parties.
“I really don’t think being on the list of 900,000 was cause for any concerns,” Louis said.
Louis said it would be a “closer call” if Ozzi had received one of the roughly 17,000 mailed notices informing owners that their properties may be subject to the surcharge. In that circumstance, he said, notifying the parties might have been appropriate, although he still did not believe recusal would necessarily be required.
Louis separately questioned what practical purpose the temporary restraining order pausing the rollout served after the supplemental roll had already been published and the notices mailed.
“The idea of a TRO being necessary didn’t make a lot of sense to me,” he said in response to a question from amNewYork.
Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School who specializes in legal ethics, said the circumstances did not appear to require Ozzi’s disqualification from the case, but said disclosure may have been warranted.
“It sounds to me from your description that there would not be a mandatory disqualification in a situation like this, but perhaps the judge should have disclosed this information because it might appear as if the judge’s interest in keeping his real estate holdings private could affect his decision,” Roiphe said.
Neither Ozzi’s order nor the other court filings reviewed by amNewYork indicate that his appearance on the roll was raised before he issued the temporary restraining order.