Open Now
Open Now
Watch now

NY liquor authority taking shots at Cloister Café over lawsuit

The state liquor authority is taking shots — at a restaurant that filed suit against it. On Monday Page Six reported that East Village hotspot Cloister Café is suing the SLA, claiming that it shut it down for COVID violations based on evidence it had cribbed from media reports — which they allege had been …

The state liquor authority is taking shots — at a restaurant that filed suit against it.

On Monday Page Six reported that East Village hotspot Cloister Café is suing the SLA, claiming that it shut it down for COVID violations based on evidence it had cribbed from media reports — which they allege had been picked up from social media.

But the SLA fired back Tuesday, telling Page Six, “While we do not comment on pending litigation, any claim that Café Closter’s summary suspension was based on social media posts or media accounts is demonstrably false.”

It said that both the New York City Sheriff’s Office and investigators with the state’s multi-agency task force inspected the spot and “at approximately 12:30 a.m. on August 7th — more than an hour after New York City’s 11:00 p.m. curfew for outdoor dining — and documented a multitude of violations, each of which put New Yorkers’ health and safety in danger during a global pandemic.”

Meanwhile, Gothamist — which published the report — is also defending its reporting saying in an article responding to their claims that far from being picked up from “a single social media post” as the restaurant claimed, the piece was “based on interviews with nearly a dozen people, including almost half a dozen who had been to their events in person.”

The New York blog maintained in the article published Tuesday that the parties were “routinely going past 11 p.m. and early into the morning multiple times a week.”

Cloister’s lawyer, Robert Garson, fired back, telling us: “The Gothamist article smacks of somebody trying to cover their exposed behinds.”

He insists that the SLA relied on the posts and concluded: “SLA’s statement is a revisionist history of how they conducted their own proceedings which is abundantly clear for all to see.”

Follow us on Google News