New York Times - Opponent Seeks to Block Construction of Downtown Mosque

By KIRK SEMPLE, NYTimes

Lawyers representing a firefighter who is suing to block the development of a Muslim community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan filed a motion on Tuesday seeking to block the developers from doing any construction on the site.

The motion, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, also asked a judge to allow the plaintiffs lawyers to conduct discovery, the pretrial phase of a lawsuit in which each party can obtain evidence through depositions and other means.

The firefighter, Timothy Brown, sued the citys Landmarks Preservation Commission on Aug. 4, accusing it of acting in an arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable manner when it paved the way for the project by refusing to grant historic protection to the building on the site where the $100 million center would be constructed.

The lawsuit also named the citys Department of Buildings, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the mosques developers as defendants.

In the motion on Tuesday, Mr. Browns lawyers accused Mr. Bloomberg of failing to respond in a timely manner to a public-records request that they said would prove the substance of their lawsuit.

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