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Real-estate honcho 'stiffs' contractors over measly amounts – New York Post
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A New York real-estate honcho has not only stiffed multiple mom-and-pop contractors who worked on his palatial, multimillion-dollar home, but has countersued them over the relatively paltry amounts they’ve billed him, according to legal papers.
Ledgerock, a glass-and-stone house perched on the banks of the Hudson River in Hyde Park, is owned by Jacob Frydman, CEO of the $2 billion United Realty Trust.
Penny-pinching is “Jacob Frydman’s method of doing business,” said David Wright, the lawyer for the company APF Fire Protection, citing a measly $6,700 bill. “Especially with regard to this project, he failed to pay several contractors, threatened lawsuits, or both.”
Wright accused Frydman of trying to bully him into dropping a suit by threatening to “litigate me into the ground like I was something he scraped of the bottom of his shoe.”
The Dutchess County mansion boasts six bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, stonework from Italy and tiles from Africa, according to one of Frydman’s adversaries.
It also has sparked an impressive number of legal actions — nine.
In one of them, Frydman, 57, says APF did a shoddy job. It sent Frydman a $6,700 bill, which he refused to pay — and then he countersued for $125,000.
The dispute went to arbitration and Frydman was ordered to pay APF $39,000 to compensate it for legal fees it incurred.
Frydman is appealing.
Another contractor, Vineyard Avenue Electric, went after Frydman for a $45,000 balance on an almost $700,000 job. An arbitrator awarded Vineyard $31,000 — and a judge threw out Frydman’s $1 million countersuit.
The mogul, however, was able to erase a $120,000 debt to a garage company, American Architectural. Two years later, the firm went bankrupt.
Developer Frydman, whose projects include Two Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in Midtown, is still entangled in a case with his concrete contractor over a $100,000 invoice.
Frydman said the number of liens and legal actions are “par for the course . . . on a project that takes several years to build.”
He also noted that the three liens filed against the Hyde Park property “were all dismissed by the court or vacated without payment being made.”
He added he’s confident the last pending suit against him will be dismissed.
Frydman was granted several environmental waivers by the local planning board to build the house on wetlands.
