Justice Edmead
PER
Justice Edmead
In an unusual move for a highly charged case turning on fine points of law, Justice Carol R. Edmead of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ruled from the bench immediately after a long and at times raucous hearing in a suit brought by opponents of the $3.5 billion Atlantic Yards project. State law forbids developers to alter the site of any proposed project until it has been approved, but the law makes an exception for emergency actions. Justice Edmead said that there was no basis for challenging the agency's determination that Forest City Ratner's buildings merited the exception, and that the agency was under no obligation to obtain an independent engineering review. But in another decision, Justice Edmead found that a prominent environmental lawyer's earlier work on behalf of Forest City Ratner disqualified him from representing the Empire State Development Corporation in the Atlantic Yards case.