YOUNGSTOWN – The attorney for the last tenant at the city-owned 20 Federal Place downtown building argued the 7th District Court of Appeals should reject Youngstown’s request to overturn a lower court’s decision denying the case’s dismissal on the grounds of statutory immunity.

Stephen Pruneski, attorney for Carrier Services Group, wrote in a Nov. 26 filing with the appeals court that Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney made the correct decision when she ruled June 24 that she would not grant summary judgment to Youngstown, which owns the mothballed building at 20 W. Federal St.

The city argued it was entitled to summary judgment based on statutory and qualified immunity – a common defense used by governments in Ohio that gives them immunity from liability in many court cases in which it is performing a government or proprietary function.The city filed an appeal July 23 with the 7th District.

Echoing Sweeney’s ruling in his filing, Pruneski wrote 20 Federal Place is a commercial building so the city can’t claim immunity “because the building wasn’t used in connection with the performance of a governmental function.”

He added: “The city didn’t use the building for any governmental purpose. They took possession of a commercial building and leased it to private parties.”

The city’s summary judgment motion, which Sweeney rejected, was filed Oct. 24 on its behalf as well as for three co-defendants, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown; Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works; and Jim Murray, the project’s engineer.

Sweeney also rejected the city’s argument that the three co-defendants are protected by qualified immunity.

Sweeney wrote Shasho decided to cut the electric power to CSG’s premises as well as fiber optic lines and “destroy and / or remove the leased premises,” while Brown “condoned and authorized” those actions and Murray told subcontractors to follow the directives during a project at 20 Federal Place.

The city argued a $7.4 million project to remove asbestos and partially demolish the building in order to have it redeveloped was “urban renewal.” That project was finished a year ago with nothing done to the building since then.

Pruneski wrote: “The city’s argument is frivolous,” and the project was done “to entice someone to either lease or buy the building to use as a commercial office building.”

In its lawsuit against the city, filed May 11, 2023, CSG, a telecommunications equipment provider that had a location at 20 Federal Place for 10 years, is seeking more than $500,000 in damages.

Pruneski wrote the “city undertook a wide variety of purposeful and intentional acts to interfere with CSG’s use of the premises and damaged their equipment.”

He wrote the city and its contractor “piled dirt, dust and debris outside the entrance to the leased premises inhibiting the ability for anyone to even enter the leased premises,” the “city allowed construction debris to bust open the entrance” and “interfere with sensitive electronic computer equipment,” cut fiber optic lines, terminated electric service and “proceeded to completely destroy” CSG’s space.

The city or its contractor also took CSG equipment, which Pruneski wrote “has now been damaged and is valueless and destroyed, converted and / or lost numerous items of equipment.”

He added: “Unbelievably, the city and its employees also argue that they had no malicious intent to damage CSG’s business by cutting the electricity and fiber optic lines. It is absolutely impossible for any court to conclude, as a matter of law, that the actions of the city were not done with a malicious or reckless purpose.”

City officials have said after the fiber optic line and the power were cut, CSG didn’t notice either for about two weeks and it was more than a week after the equipment was moved to the city’s traffic engineering building on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard before the company realized that occurred.

Frank Scialdone, an attorney with the Cleveland law firm of Mazanec, Raskin and Ryder, representing the city, wrote in an Oct. 24 filing that Sweeney “erroneously denied summary judgment on a claim that was never raised against the city and does not avoid the city’s presumption of immunity, erroneously denied well-established immunity for a city’s actions while engaged in the immune governmental function of urban renewal under (state statute), erroneously denied state-law immunity under (state statute) for failing to demonstrate an exception to the individual’s immunity, and erroneously denied qualified immunity to the individual appellants by failing to demonstrate in any specific or particularized way that the individual appellants violated clearly established constitutional law.”

Scialdone wrote the appeals court that “neither Carrier nor the lower court demonstrated that the employees acted with the high level of culpability required to divest them of immunity. Even at its most forgiving prong of recklessness, the lower court gave no indication of how these individual appellants each acted with ‘perverse disregard’ or had a ‘conscious’ understanding that in ‘all probability’ serious injury would constitute ‘something more than mere negligence.'”

Carrier hasn’t had a valid lease since Sept. 30, 2020, when an old contract expired, and the company failed to renew on a timely basis, Magistrate Dennis J. Sarisky ruled Aug. 23, 2023, and Sweeney upheld Dec. 6, 2023.

“There is simply no evidence in the record that Carrier’s failure to timely renew its lease was induced by the city’s conduct,” Sarisky wrote in that decision.

Sarisky added: “The court finds that the lease was not properly renewed and therefore became a month-to-month tenancy.”

Pruneski argued the city accepted payments from the company for renewals for 2021 and 2022 and that Carrier paid yearly and not monthly for nine years.

Invoices for 2021, 2022 and 2023 were given to Carrier by Joyce Gorsky, who worked for the city as an independent contract assisting with 20 Federal Place tenants.

Sarisky agreed with city officials that only the three-member board of control can renew leases and that wasn’t done with Carrier.

In his decision, Sarisky wrote the city needed to give CSG 30 days’ notice of eviction. The city argues it did so on Aug. 24, 2023, while CSG contends the notice had to be 30 days from the date the rent was due under the lease agreement.

The city in May paid $50,000 to Tokio Marine, the city’s insurance company, to cover its deductible in this ongoing lawsuit.

There were 19 tenants, taking up about 20 percent of the 332,000-square-foot building before eviction notices were sent in July 2022. Some of the tenants received extensions, including CSG, which stayed in the building the longest.

The evictions occurred because of the project to remove asbestos and partially demolish the building.

The city purchased the building in November 2004 after Phar-Mor, a national retail store company, went out of business. The property was the Phar-Mor Centre, the company’s corporate headquarters. Before that, it was the flagship location of Strouss’ department store for several decades.

The city has twice entered into agreements with companies to redevelop the building. Both have failed.

The latest came when city officials announced Aug. 12 that it ended a nonbinding agreement with Bluelofts Inc., a Dallas business that proposed a $55 million to $60 million project, and that $24 million in state and federal historic preservation tax credits would be forfeited.