A state Supreme Court judge has appointed an independent receiver to collect payments due Westchester businessman Sammy Eljamal by the partners with whom he has waged a four-year battle of lawsuits in state and federal courts and to sell off Eljamal”™s interests in their Shell gas station holding companies to pay nearly $4.8 million in damages a jury awarded a former office colleague whom Eljamal falsely accused of making death threats against him and his family.
As of early March, Eljamal”™s distributive share as a member of NY Fuel Holdings LLC and Metro NY Dealer Stations LLC totaled approximately $464,000, according to papers filed in another Supreme Court case involving Eljamal and the managing partners, Scarsdale investor James Weil and Silverman Realty Group Inc. Chairman Leon Silverman, who removed Eljamal as manager of their Shell gas station operations in Westchester, Long Island and New York City.
The money has been held by the partners in an escrow account while the financially beleaguered Eljamal has repeatedly replaced attorneys and filed numerous court motions, appeals and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court related to a separate $5 million judgment against him in favor of Silverman in a dispute over control of several Shell gas stations in Connecticut.
- An independent receiver will sell off Sammy Eljamal”™s interests in Shell gas station holding companies.
Lois N. Rosen, a White Plains attorney representing Silverman in the Connecticut business dispute, in a Bankruptcy Court filing last year said Eljamal”™s petition for protection from creditors on behalf of his Thornwood company, Connecticut Dealer Stations Management LLC, “is just the latest example of Eljamal”™s efforts to use (and misuse) the judicial system for his own collateral business advantage.” Eljamal, she said, “has made it clear that he is willing to go to any lengths to avoid the ultimate day of reckoning.”
Eljamal has been unavailable for comment on the skein of lawsuits in which he has been involved since 2011 as either a plaintiff or defendant.
On April 7, Supreme Court Justice Francesca E. Connolly appointed the receiver shortly after her decision that upheld a jury”™s verdict last year that required Eljamal to pay $4,785,000 to Brent Coscia, general manager at New York Fuel Distributors LLC in White Plains. An Eljamal associate, Brian Orser, was ordered to pay $225,260 for his role in a series of incidents targeting Coscia, one of which led to the veteran fuel-oil industry manager”™s arrest by Harrison police on a charge of aggravated harassment.
Coscia was found not guilty after he produced phone records showing he never made the threatening phone call to Eljamal”™s home in Purchase that both Eljamal and Orser claimed he had made.
Eljamal had sought to have the verdict set aside, claiming that the trial last May was “rife with judicial error” on the part of Justice Lester B. Adler.
Eljamal claimed Adler erred in denying his request to represent himself in the course of the trial and failed to properly instruct the jury as to the standard of proof for an award of punitive damages.
Eljamal also cited Adler”™s refusal to discharge a juror who claimed she could not be impartial until late in the trial and the judge”™s failure to question the other jurors as to whether the excused juror had spoken to them about her bias.
Connolly rejected his claims. As for the trial judge”™s refusal to grant Eljamal”™s request to represent himself in the trial, “Eljamal”™s volatile demeanor (for example, openly crying in the courtroom) would have presented a distraction to the jury and unnecessarily prolonged the trial,” she wrote.
Connolly also noted that the excused juror explicitly stated in court that she had not spoken to any other jurors. Eljamal had not presented any proof to back his claim that the biased juror had tainted the other jurors, she said.
Eljamal last year was denied his bid to halt enforcement of the roughly $4.79 million judgment against him in an appeal to the state Appellate Division.
With his appeal denied, Connolly wrote in her April 7 decision and order, “both the time and circumstances are ripe” to appoint a receiver to collect Eljamal”™s monetary distributions from the gas station companies and ultimately sell his interests in them to pay Coscia. Eljamal has an 8.67 percent interest in each of the companies.
The judge, however, denied Coscia”™s request to be appointed receiver. Instead she named Tarrytown attorney John C. Guttridge to bring Eljamal”™s interests in the companies to an end.
