Sacco v. Pataki, 114 F. Supp. 2d 264 (S.D.N.Y. 2000): hiring at the Javits Center

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, decided 25 September 2000. The plaintiffs were union members, from Teamsters Local 807 and Exposition Workers Local 829, who had worked at the Javits Center and were not hired after the State reorganized hiring there. Their only remaining claim was that each “was deprived of a liberty interest without due process of law” by state officials’ “highly publicized statements” about corruption at the center.

As undisputed background the court records that “The Javits Center is a large convention hall established in 1986 by the State of New York,” run by the New York Convention Center Operating Corporation, and that “On June 30, 1995, NYCCOC announced a fundamental change in hiring practices at the Javits Center”: the corporation would hire trade-show labor itself. The motions for summary judgment by the corporation and two of its officers were granted.

The opinion quotes newspaper and magazine articles about organized crime and corruption at the center, among them New York Magazine and the New York Post, to show what was published. Those are the publications’ statements, not findings of the court, and this page does not repeat them. No federal indictment or opinion on the Javits Center itself has been filed here.