Developer Charged With Failing To Maintain Waterfront Property 434 Times

Though they cannot or will not prosecute him for actually setting the fire, the Brooklyn DA will charge developer Joshua Guttman with 434 counts of “failure to maintain waterfront property”:

Joshua Guttman, 58, faces 434 counts of failure to maintain waterfront property — a misdemeanor only brought once before in history, said lawyer Robert Hill Schwartz.

“Our research discloses only one reported case in which this statute was enforced,” Schwartz said yesterday in Brooklyn Criminal Court. “So there’s a question as to this statute and whether it’s applicable.”

The lawyer said the research did not indicate how that case was disposed of or which of the five boroughs it was brought in.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn DA countered that although their office could only document one such case that they prosecuted, other agencies and jurisdictions in the city had applied it “dozens of times.”

Brooklyn prosecutors hit Guttman and his son, Jack, 26, with the charges following the suspicious fire at the Greenpoint Terminal Market last May 2.

See also: Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire.