Alleges mishandling of traffic, parking tickets
A Cold Spring resident has sued the Village of Cold Spring and its court justice and clerk in state court over traffic and parking tickets he considers “facially defective and jurisdictionally deficient.”
Daniel Branda alleges in a lawsuit filed Feb. 18 in Carmel that Justice Thomas Costello and Court Clerk Cathy Costello missed deadlines to rule on three motions he filed last year to dismiss tickets issued between June 2023 and June 2024, while granting the village “extraordinary extensions.”
He said the court improperly reported the contested tickets as unpaid fines, temporarily preventing renewal of his residential parking permit, and that Thomas and Cathy Costello, who are married, failed to disclose their relationship in violation of state law.
Branda has asked the court to remove the Justice Court from its jurisdiction over his cases and to dismiss his tickets. According to the Journal News, Branda rented his apartment on Church Street in Cold Spring in 2022 for his family but retained his residency in Somers to run as a Republican for the Westchester County Legislature. He lost in November 2023 to Democratic incumbent Vedat Gashi.
