Jury rejects most of Toussie's claims

A federal jury rejected almost all of real-estate developer Robert Toussie's claims Friday, awarding him just $12,500 instead of the $30 million he sought in his discrimination suit against Suffolk County.

Toussie in his lawsuit said the county in 2001 unjustly refused to sell surplus land to him even though he was the highest bidder at auction. He said county officials again refused to sell him land in 2002 and then in 2004 barred him from bidding at all.

After deliberating for about 12 hours since Wednesday afternoon, the jury agreed only with Toussie's 2004 claim.

Toussie, of Brooklyn, said in his suit that the county discriminated against him because his son, Isaac, was convicted of mail fraud in connection with the sale of the Chandler Estate in Mount Sinai to the county and because county officials relied on accounts reported in Newsday about his business activities.

Robert Toussie was never charged with a crime and has denied any wrongdoing.

His son was sentenced to five months in federal prison and five months of home detention. In 2010, Toussie and a local mortgage bank agreed to pay $455,000 to settle a class-action suit accusing them of conspiring to sell shoddily built homes to more than 250 minority homeowners, although they denied the allegations.

Assistant County Attorney Chris Termini said the verdict was a victory for the county and that the jury also recognized that Toussie had set up relatives or friends as "straw buyers" to make bids on his behalf.

SEE PHOTOSGeorge Guldi

"They upheld the legislature's actions in 2001 and 2002 and the concept of bringing in straw buyers to bid," Termini said.

Termini had said that legislators acted to protect the county because they believed Toussie was directing others to buy county property that he ultimately profited from.

Toussie's attorneys, Abbe Lowell and Scott Balber, said in a statement that Toussie and his wife, Laura, were "gratified that the jury agreed that Suffolk County violated their constitutional and civil rights, as they have claimed for all of these years. . . . They are disappointed that the jury did not provide them the damages for the properties they were denied, but to them and their family, it was always about showing that the county's actions were terribly wrong."

Immediately after the verdict, Termini asked Judge Joanna Seybert to release the hold on the properties in dispute with Toussie. She did so, freeing the county to again put them up for sale at its next auction.

Balber said in court that he would seek to have the county pay Toussie's attorneys fees. Given the small size of the verdict, Termini said later that they won't get the $7.5 million they once sought.