BUFFALO, N.Y. — 2 On Your Side talked with an attorney on Tuesday about what the next steps might be for the Cobblestone fire case as it continues to move through the legal system based on what we know now.
In her ruling, the judge said the proper way to get a demolition order was to go through the preservation board, not housing court.
"It's up to the city officials to actually bring that application and say that they want to seek a demolition of the building. In this case, you also have the preservation society that is allowed to have a role in making that decision," said attorney Barry Covert.
We asked Covert what would have happened next if the fire didn't happen.
"Then we can expect that the owners of the building would have appealed Judge DiTullio's decision to the 4th Department and that is the appellate division," said Covert.
Then, he thinks a ruling would take months, or even years, with more appeals. The fire, he says, expedites things.
"The engineers for the city now have to determine whether the building can be preserved, whether it can be brought back up to specs, preservation society again will have a role in that. They may well want to go back now under these new facts to Judge DiTullio to see if they can get her to reconsider her ruling because now the building can't, if in fact the engineers say that the building can't be brought back to its original specs, or an inordinate amount of money would be spent to do so, then Judge DiTullio may well be asked to review this again," said Covert.
Either way, he says an appeal is likely.
"Now it's become impossibly complex. As complex as it was before the fire, now it really was ratcheted up because there are so many different factors involved. The city engineers, the judge, the housing court, Judge DiTullio, the 4th Department Court of Appeals. This is quite the quagmire for the lawyers to try to carve the right path to see whether either the building is going to come down now because the fire has rendered it kind of not impossible, but very difficult, or expensive to bring it up to specs, or whether the preservationist society is going to say we want it brought back," said Covert.
Covert went on to say that it is very difficult to figure out how a fire like this started, so that makes things even more complicated as this case moves forward.