Mayor Eric Adams’ lawyers are playing hardball with the woman accusing him of sexually abusing her while they served in the NYPD together decades ago.
Adams’ attorneys claimed in a court document filed Tuesday that plaintiff Lorna Beach-Mathura and her legal team have been dragging their feet in complying with their requests for evidence in the case.
“Plaintiff failed to properly respond to defendants’ discovery requests by the deadline prescribed by the CPLR [New York Consolidated Laws, Civil Practice Law and Rules],” Adams co-counsel Alex Spiro and city assistant corporation counsel Maxwell Leighton wrote in the Manhattan Supreme Court filing.
The attorneys said they agreed to Beach-Mathura’s ask that an initial hearing be set in the case “at the court’s hearing” — but then noted the request didn’t mean she was allowed to blow past deadlines to submit discovery materials.
“Plaintiff’s request for a preliminary conference does not allow her to ignore applicable statutes requiring substantive responses to properly served discovery,” they wrote to Judge Richard Latin.
“Defendants have asked plaintiff to promptly remedy these violations and reserve the right to move for appropriate relief from the Court if plaintiff fails to do so.”
The filing noted that Adams “fully” denies the allegations in Beach-Mathura’s suit and that his team asked her lawyers for “any documents or other information purportedly corroborating Plaintiff’s claim.”
Beach-Mathura’s attorneys instead provided “non-substantive, boilerplate responses to each document request and interrogatory,” according to the filing from Adams’ team.
They requested that Beach-Mathura “‘supplement’ her responses by the date ordered by the Court at the preliminary conference in this matter.’”
The procedural skirmish in the court filing shows that Adams’s legal team is going to fiercely contest and seek to debunk her claims.
Beach-Mathura accused Adams of sexually assaulting her in 1993 in a lawsuit seeking at least $5 million filed just before the deadline for New York’s Adult Survivors Act.
In the bombshell lawsuit, she claimed Adams exposed himself to her and asked for oral sex in exchange for helping her in her career when he was a transit cop and she was a police administrative aide three decades ago.
Adams was the leader of the Transit Bureau NYPD Guardians Association, which fights for rights of black employees.
Beach-Mathura said she’d been passed over for promotion as a black woman in the NYPD in 1993 and sought Adams’ help.
Adams denied the claims, and said he didn’t even know Beach-Mathura when she filed the suit.
He is up for re-election next year.
The Post reached out to Beach-Mathura’s lawyers for comment.
