A $2.5 million lawsuit brought against three Town of Saugerties officials by former Saugerties Police Chief Joseph Sinagra was dismissed last week in Ulster County Supreme Court for being “not actionable in the context of a defamation action.”
In the 12-page decision handed down on Monday, March 31, Supreme Court Judge Sharon Graff said Sinagra’s July 2024 lawsuit against Supervisor Fred Costello, and councilmen Mike Ivino and Zach Horton had expressed their opinions rather than fact in discussing the events leading up to and following his retirement.
“In this regard,” Graff said, “… Costello’s statement that ‘…the controversy and Sinagra’s handling of it played a role in how well the town police department was functioning,’ Ivino’s statement that ‘…policies that weren’t effective and just caused animosity’ … and Horton’s statement that ‘Not that I like to speak for other board members here but I think I can confidently say that it’s not only my goal and commitment but the commitment of every member up here to bring integrity back to this department (and) to restore stability within the department,’ are, in each instance at most, simply expressions of opinions’.”
Sinagra retired from the Saugerties Police Department inSeptember 2023 in the wake of a report by New York State Attorney General Letitia James’ Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office (LEMIO) which covered multiple complaints against officer Dion Johnson, including allegations of harassment and sexual assault. Town board members pointed to the report and the department’s response as a primary motivation for placing Sinagra on administrative leave over the summer of 2023. Sinagra maintained that he hadn’t done anything wrong.
In the filing, Sinagra was not only seeking the stated $2.5 million, but also an award of damages at trial commensurate with loss of income, legal expenses and damage to his reputation. The filing cited statements made by the three members of the town board in local media, including Hudson Valley One and claimed they yielded “unsavory or evil opinion in the minds of a significant number of people in the community.”
Ivino shared a press release on social media on April 1.
“The attorneys representing the Town of Saugerties and board in this matter were very optimistic of the outcome and is now supported by the findings of the court,” he said. “Judge Sharon A. Graff credited our two primary, dispositive arguments: (1) that several of Sinagra’s claims are time-barred because the alleged defamatory statements were made more than 90 days before he filed the notice of claim, depriving the court of subject matter jurisdiction; and (2) that the remaining statements are ‘at most, simply expressions of opinions about how the police department was impacted in general as a result of the Johnson investigation and how best to address that impact.’ The language in the statements were also so limited that no reasonable reader would be led to believe they were conveying facts about plaintiff, ‘much less than they were ‘reasonably susceptible of a defamatory connotation’.”
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