Former Mayor Eric Adams wants taxpayers to pay his legal fees for a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a fellow police officer when they both worked for the transit police in 1993 — and he says New York City’s law department is playing politics to avoid picking up the tab.
Private attorneys Adams hired made the claim in court papers and testimony in New York Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The law department, meanwhile, says continuing to represent the former mayor would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Lorna Beach-Mathura, a former transit officer, filed a lawsuit against Adams while he was still in office, accusing him of preying on her when they both worked as transit officers. She alleged Adams offered to help her when she was passed over for a promotion, but instead drove her to a vacant lot and sexually abused her.
The lawsuit was filed under the Adult Survivors Act, a state law that opened a one-year window to bring claims of sexual misconduct outside the typical statute of limitations. Adams has repeatedly denied the allegations.
The law department filed court papers last month asking a judge to allow the city to stop representing the former mayor, arguing the agency had determined Adams was not acting within the scope of his job as a city employee during the alleged incident. New York law requires the city to provide legal representation when its employees are accused of wrongdoing in their capacity as government employees, as long as they weren’t breaking any agency rules or regulations at the time.
City attorney Maxwell Leighton told a judge in court Wednesday that the agency made an initial decision to represent Adams early on in the case, based on limited facts. Since then, he said, more information has come to light that makes Adams ineligible for city representation.
Leighton said the law department’s request to pull out of the case is due in part to a lack of records related to the case. He said the agency has struggled to find many relevant documents because the allegations are decades old.
For instance, Adams’ personnel files from his days at the transit bureau were destroyed when Hurricane Sandy flooded a warehouse, Leighton said. The attorney also cited statements Beach-Mathura made in a confidential deposition, which he said also helped the law department determine the allegations weren’t related to actions within the scope of Adams’ job as a transit officer.
Leighton said this decision was not based on the strength of Beach-Mathura’s case. Rather, he said, it was based on the law department’s determination that there was no legal connection between Beach-Mathura’s case and Adams’ employment as a transit officer.
“There is no reason for the taxpayers to pay for the defense in this case,” Leighton said.
The city attorney also denied that the decision was made for political reasons. He said Steven Banks, the city corporation counsel appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has been reviewing a wide swath of the legal department’s cases to determine whether city attorneys should still be involved.
“This evaluation was independent of any and all politics,” Leighton said.
But Adams’ private attorneys said he believed political motivations were driving the law department’s decision to pull out of the case, not legal ones.
Attorney Alan Futerfas argued in court that it would be wrong — and against past decisions in higher court — for the city to stop representing Adams after doing so for years. He said the law department can’t change its mind about whom it’s going to represent any time a new person comes into office.
“The city’s going to make a decision in the first instance. That decision’s going to stick,” he said.
Futerfas also argued the law department has created a conflict in the way it asked to stop representing Adams. He said city lawyers have created a perception that they believe Beach-Mathura’s version of events because they cited her deposition in their request to be removed from the case.
Futerfas is asking a judge to order the city to pay for a private attorney to represent Adams in the case.
Justice Brendan Lantry said he will make a decision as soon as possible, but cautioned it could take some time because the arguments fall within a “unique area of the law.”