Forty restaurant owners yesterday slapped the city with a $150 million lawsuit, calling the Health Department grading system unconstitutional and an unfair tax on small businesses.
“The health inspector, following guidelines of the health code, creates a revenue scheme for the city of New York in a confusing manner to extract monies through the issuance of violations on hardworking mom-and-pop stores trying to make a living,” the Manhattan Supreme Court suit states.
The restaurateurs, including Stephen and Rosetta Lawless, who have run the Shamrock Inn in The Bronx for 17 years, claim the fines are unconstitutional because the mayor used administrative fiat to enact the code instead of going through the City Council.
Further, the suit claims, the system is unfair because it is imposed in a selective and inconsistent manner.
Stephen Lawless noted in the court filing that one inspector told him to store his eggs on the top shelf of a refrigerator while another said they should be placed on a lower level. “I have been going through hell and back with the board of health,” Lawless huffed in the suit.
The Post exclusively reported yesterday that the department was issuing nitpicky violations unrelated to food quality.“Inspectors have been very oppressive against all restaurants,” he argued. The fines are especially crippling for Bronx business owners who already face a difficult economic climate, he added.
A whopping 32 percent of last year’s summonses were issued for a miscellaneous category that includes dimly lit light bulbs and improper labeling.
Neil Grimaldi, the attorney representing the eateries in the suit, said that although his clients are all located in The Bronx, the problem is citywide.
Grimaldi said his clients, including Egidio Sementilli of the Italian joint Mamma Lucia in Locust Point, were inspired to file suit after the beverage industry won a challenge to the mayor’s soda ban.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department called the suit a “rambling, scattershot attack on the city’s regulation of food-service establishments,” and noted that “the grading program has led to cleaner kitchens, with more than 80 percent now earning A grades.”