Oral argument has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 29th at 11am on the case DDDB et al. v. ESDC. The argument is on the motion by the petitioners asking the court to reconsider and reargue their challenge to the state's September 2009 approvlal of the Atlantic Yards Modified General Project Plan.

Judge Marcy Friedman had ruled for the ESDC Bu the plaintiffs, DDDB and 19 other community groups, as well as BrooklynSpeaks, asked the court to allow reargument in light of new evidence found in the Atlantic Yards Development Agreement between ESDC and Ratner ,which had been made public only after the case was argued.

Details on the oral argument:
Tuesday, June 29. 11 AM
60 Centre Street, Room 335
Manhattan

The ruling on the original case—which challenged the ESDC's September 2009 approval the Modified General Project Plan—hinged on whether or not there was a rational basis for the ESDC to claim the project would take ten years.

In the March 10th ruling, the Court wrote:

"Under the limited standard of SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) review, the court is constrained to hold that ESDC's elaboration of its reasons for using the 10 year build-out was supported — albeit, in this court's opinion, only minimally — by the factors articulated by ESDC." (Emphasis added.)

The Court had no choice but to ignore the crucial Development Agreement documents that prove the project would take at least 25 years, because the ESDC had not made them part of the public record, and had not accurately reflected the elements of that agreement.

If, as the Court ruled, the ESDC's rationale was "only minimally" supported before, it would seem that that minimal support erodes entirely due to the facts subsequently revealed in the Atlantic Yards Development Agreement.