Brooklyn, NY - Fire Crime Charges First Of A Kind

Brooklyn, NY - The landlord whose Greenpoint property went up in a massive fire last May is in a class by himself - or nearly so, when it comes to the charges he's facing.

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 in Brooklyn Criminal Court. "So there's a question as to this statute and whether it's applicable."
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.