Response to Question 11 — Relationship with Sandercock at Stipulation Signing¶
Version: v2.1 | Updated: 2026-04-01
"Was there friction between you before the stipulation was executed, and if so, do you believe it affected the terms she negotiated?"
Yes. There was friction between me and Ms. Sandercock before the stipulation was filed, and I do believe it affected the terms she negotiated.
Goodfarb & Sandercock had been retained under a June 16, 2020 retainer to represent me in both the HP proceeding and a related Supreme Court damages action simultaneously. Ms. Sandercock had articulated that dual mandate herself the day before the retainer was transmitted, writing on June 15, 2020: "This is the case for mold repairs that we told you we have to bring first, before we can sue your landlord for money." That matters for everything that follows, because her advice about remediation scope was not only a housing court tactical question — what she advised me to accept or demand in the HP case would directly shape the factual and evidentiary foundation for the damages claim she was retained to pursue.
The friction that developed was substantive, not personal. The consistent disagreement was that I was pushing for a fuller and more protective remediation scope, and I increasingly felt that Ms. Sandercock was minimizing both the written record and the importance of specific scope items. That pattern appears in the correspondence from the first weeks of representation and continues through the weeks immediately before the stipulation was filed.
The baseline I was working from predated Ms. Sandercock's involvement by six months. In late November 2019, Chris Roussis of Total Restoration, Inc. inspected G21 and produced a scope of work calling for a complete gut of the studio rooms to the structural members, removal of the bathroom raised floor and tub, party wall probes, and ceiling probes.
The estimate identified American Packaging Company — my landlord — as the insured, and I understood that scope was used in connection with the landlord's property insurance claim. That was the professional baseline I was pressing for throughout the entire period of Sandercock's representation — not a wish list, but a contractor-defined scope already reduced to writing for the insured property before she entered the case.
The Pre-Signing Record¶
June 2020 — Petition narrowing and scope deference
In June 2020, after I submitted detailed factual corrections to the HP petition papers — covering the improper sprinkler maintenance violation, the second flood, the hallway-versus-unit remediation disparity, and the length of the delay — Ms. Sandercock responded that "the papers do not need to say every single thing you know about the floods" because those details could come out in testimony. (Sandercock Correspondence, Jun. 22, 2020, p. 105.) I understood that as a real disagreement about how fully my situation should be documented in the court record, not a minor drafting choice.
Around the same time, when I was pressing for a fuller remediation response, she advised: "It is usual to allow the landlord to do what they want to do and test afterwards and return to court to make the landlord do more. It's doubtful that you should be arguing with the landlord's experts as you don't have the expertise." (Sandercock Correspondence, Jun. 23, 2020, p. 126.) On the same day, my retained expert Edward Olmsted responded to the landlord's proposed scope: "I can say based on some of results that scope of work the building expert has recommended is too limited." (Sandercock Correspondence, Jun. 23, 2020, p. 144.) My attorney was advising deference; my expert was flagging inadequacy. I received those two conflicting positions on the same day.
Also in June 2020, Ms. Sandercock pressed Olmsted to remove the description of the unit as a "sound studio unit G21" from the opening paragraph of his report, writing: "It is a residence, the purpose of the unit is not as a sound studio." (Sandercock Correspondence, Jun. 28, 2020, p. 152.) The unit was a live-work space — a residence and a professional music and multimedia production studio built with professional-level sound isolation and acoustic treatment. Ms. Sandercock knew that. The studio function is the foundation of the commercial income loss damages in the Supreme Court action she was retained to pursue, and the acoustic construction of the studio rooms is the reason the remediation scope in this case is what it is. Directing the expert to characterize the unit as only a residence in his first report meant that the documented record would not reflect the unit's professional use at the point where it was first being established.
October–November 2020 — Waiver pressure and scope reduction framing
In October 2020, Ms. Sandercock communicated that the landlord expected us to sign the narrative statement waivers. (Sandercock Correspondence, Oct. 28, 2020, p. 304.) In November 2020, she framed the available options around what the landlord's attorney would and would not agree to, rather than what the documented conditions required. I pushed back directly, stating that the landlord's position was clearly to do as little as possible, and that my goal was a full scope, a new layout, and as much recovery from the damages case as possible. (Sandercock Correspondence, Nov. 16, 2020, pp. 369–370.)
February 10–11, 2021 — Capitulation advice on specific scope items
By February 2021 the disagreement had become direct. When I raised a specific objection about the air-handling systems serving the recording studios — an item Olmsted had previously confirmed was required — Ms. Sandercock wrote: "You are going to have to accept what they will do now and test after and argue for more after. We keep telling you it's the best we can do." (Sandercock Correspondence, Feb. 10, 2021, p. 642.) I responded the following morning: "I don't understand how that that is remotely acceptable. That system is a close loop system that feeds air to sealed studio rooms. The unit was and is exposed to mold spores. This should be self-evident. Ed already agreed that this needed to be done, without a doubt, and it would get done... Ridiculous!" (Sandercock Correspondence, Feb. 11, 2021, p. 644.)
The stipulation was filed approximately four months after this exchange.
May 10–11, 2021 — Concurrent TA pressure and the clearest pre-signing advisory
On May 10–11, 2021 — weeks before the stipulation was filed — billing pressure and scope capitulation advice converged on the same two days. Ms. Sandercock was pressing me in my role as a TA leader about unpaid bills from other tenants — specifically Hubbard and Lockhart — making clear that continued group representation depended on resolving those billing issues. (Sandercock Correspondence, May 10–11, 2021, pp. 930, 953.)
On May 11, 2021, after I sent a detailed point-by-point rebuttal to the landlord's objections on the disputed scope items — citing Olmsted's specific sample results and lab findings — Ms. Sandercock responded: "I do think you should accept their scope of work if you want to avoid court. I think we have to stop asking for things they won't do." (Sandercock Correspondence, May 11, 2021, p. 948.) That is the clearest statement in the correspondence record that she was advising me to stop pressing for disputed remediation items in order to avoid litigation. It was sent on the morning of the pre-trial conference, in direct response to a technical rebuttal I had stayed up to prepare.
May 18, 2021 — Final pre-signing scope meeting
A Zoom meeting followed on May 18, 2021, with Ms. Sandercock, Elizabeth Sandercock, and Olmsted. (Sandercock Correspondence, May 18, 2021, p. 961.) That meeting was a continuation of the same dispute that had been documented in writing throughout the prior year. I was pressing for the complete Roussis scope — the same scope I understood had been used in connection with the landlord's insurance claim. That is what I was pushing for in that meeting, and Sandercock had stated in writing four days earlier that I should stop asking for things they would not do. The stipulation was filed on June 29, 2021. The scope in the stipulation did not deliver what Roussis had established and what I understood had been presented in connection with the insurance claim.
After the Stipulation Was Filed¶
The stipulation was filed on June 29, 2021. Within weeks, the post-remediation dispute that I had been warning about for the prior year began to materialize.
In August 2021, ALC issued a post-remediation verification report stating that the apartment had achieved clearance. Olmsted disputed that finding and identified scope items that had not been completed. Ms. Sandercock sent a notice of default to the landlord's attorney on August 19, 2021. (Sandercock Correspondence, Aug. 19, 2021, p. 1070.)
After that default notice, no enforcement motion was filed for approximately ten months. I continued to notify Ms. Sandercock of ongoing conditions at G21 during that period. No motion was filed in the fall of 2021 or the winter or spring of 2022.
On May 31, 2022, Ms. Sandercock wrote: "there is a Supreme Court action for damages and we are messing up our ability to get damages by not doing everything we can to help ourselves in Housing Court." (Sandercock Correspondence, May 31, 2022, p. 1259.)
The Motion to Restore was filed on June 14, 2022 — roughly ten months after the default notice. (NYSCEF Doc #11.) Two days later, on June 16, 2022, Ms. Sandercock began pressing me toward a buyout. (Sandercock Correspondence, Jun. 16, 2022, p. 1270.) That pressure continued through June and July 2022, with additional buyout communications on July 11 and July 13–14. (Sandercock Correspondence, Jul. 2022, pp. 1308, 1310–1311.)
The sequence was: ten months with no enforcement motion, her own written acknowledgment that the delay was harming the damages case, the motion filed, and buyout pressure beginning two days after she filed it. In my view, the motion was not filed to win. It was filed so she could say she had done something, while the real objective was getting me to accept a buyout and close everything out.
The buyout pressure escalated into the October 2022 ultimatum sequence described below. When I would not accept, the threats to withdraw began. The motion remained pending throughout — it was not resolved until September 29, 2023, when Judge Smith denied it on procedural and evidentiary grounds without reaching the merits of whether the scope had actually been completed. (WT-117.)
By that point, we had already fired her and substituted Ween & Kozek. But the motion record she built was what the court had before it. The materials that could have proved the landlord's non-compliance with Paragraph 5 existed in her own files. They were not placed before the court.
Termination¶
In October 2022, the relationship broke down. Ms. Sandercock refused to present the $4 million collective settlement figure that all four tenants had agreed upon. Instead, she made an individual buyout proposal to me alone, and her communications began using the other tenants' financial interests as leverage against my individual decisions.
October 15, 2022: "I hope you have understood you should not propose more than $1.5M and that other tenants are suffering due to your indecision." (Sandercock Correspondence, Oct. 15, 2022, p. 1389.)
October 17, 2022: "You are harming other tenants by not following our advice, not to mention harming yourself. We cannot represent you if you can't accept our advice. We will have to ask to get off at least your personal cases." (Sandercock Correspondence, Oct. 17, 2022, p. 1395.)
October 19, 2022: "The only person for whom I made a buyout proposal is Christian." (Sandercock Correspondence, Oct. 19, 2022, p. 1407.)
Individual proposals directed at me, refusal to present the collective figure, and characterizations of my positions as harmful to my co-tenants. She had issued an ultimatum: follow her advice or she would withdraw. We terminated the engagement before she could act on it.
On November 4, 2022, all four tenants — Christian Gray, David May, Kate Downie, and Erez Horovitz — communicated the termination by email: "This email confirms that we are terminating your services for all matters, as you invited, effective immediately. We do not and no longer believe that you represented our interests, as demonstrated by, amongst other matters, your setting of ultimatums, unwillingness to advocate for us, and refusal to present our position on settlement." (Erez Horovitz to Margaret Sandercock, Nov. 4, 2022, Subject: "226 Tenants Representation.")
Ween & Kozek was substituted as attorneys of record in November 2022. (Substitution of Counsel, OATH Index 22-1758)
I do not think it is accurate to say the problems began only in 2022. In my view, the seeds of the breakdown were present before the stipulation was filed, in the repeated disagreements over scope completeness, the written record, and whether to accept less now and fight later. The October 2022 conduct was the culmination of a pattern that had been in place from the start — including, I believe, the release language in the stipulation itself, which I later came to understand placed me in a compromised negotiating position.
How the Friction Affected the Terms¶
The specific stipulation items I believe were most directly affected by the pre-signing pattern are the following.
The professional baseline for all of these items was the Roussis scope I described above — the December 2019 scope that called for a complete gut of the studio rooms, bathroom raised floor and tub removal, bathroom-kitchen shared wall inspection, party wall probes, and ceiling probes. These are the same categories of work that I was pressing for throughout 2020 and 2021, and that Ms. Sandercock repeatedly advised me to stop demanding.
The three studio rooms — gut scope. The Roussis scope established the professional baseline: a complete gut of all three studio rooms — Rooms 1, 2, and 3 — down to the structural members: studs, ceiling deck, and concrete slab. That scope carried into the stipulation as Item 1 of Exhibit 1, with the same language retained. It is also the scope I understand was used in connection with the landlord's insurance claim. The studio rooms contain multi-layer acoustic isolation systems. Each layer has a defined acoustic function; removing only the first layer is not equivalent to removing the assembly. Servpro removed only the first layer of material in each wall, ceiling, and floor system. I then had to fight for every subsequent layer individually, arguing on the basis of what the original scope and stipulation already required. Ms. Sandercock's approach throughout was to let the work happen and test afterward, rather than to enforce compliance with the defined scope before testing began. She never demanded to see the scope of work that ALC/Kofman had actually submitted to Servpro. Had she done so, there may have been documentary evidence that Servpro was given a different scope than what the stipulation required — which is what I believe occurred. The full scope of work from the Stipulation of Settlement (HP 6086/2020) is documented in detail.
The acoustically isolated ceiling in the main living area. This was a multi-layer assembly: two layers of 5/8" drywall, stagger-seamed, with green glue between the layers, friction-fitted on neoprene strips glued to the joist faces, with all seams caulked with acoustic sealant, secured with dimensional lumber nailed into the joist faces, and sealed with four layers of paint. The assembly was air-tight and water-tight. After the flood, water breached all of it — there is video evidence of water pouring through this ceiling throughout the space. The stipulation required cutting probes into the ceiling to the wood deck and inspecting for mold. Olmsted's testing had already found massive contamination above the living room ceiling, and he argued that the ceiling needed to come down. I agreed and pressed for it. Kofman and ALC resisted removal at every stage. The probes required by the stipulation were never cut. The result was that a completely saturated and compromised assembly remained in place while I continued to incur professional fees arguing for what both my expert and I believed the conditions required.
The raised kitchen floor. The kitchen floor was completely water-saturated. After the PRV report and after Olmsted disputed its findings and produced a list of items still requiring action, Jack Glass walked through with Olmsted and agreed that the floor needed to come out. Agreement did not produce timely action. I continued to fight for its removal while the condition persisted.
The raised bathroom floor and bathtub area. This was specifically identified for removal in the stipulation scope. It has not been done. It is still there.
The pattern across all of these items is consistent: the Roussis scope established what was required, the stipulation incorporated a defined scope of work, and then I found myself fighting for compliance with what the stipulation already required — layer by layer, item by item — while my attorney's general posture was to accept what had been done and argue for more afterward. Every discrepancy required me to re-engage both Olmsted and Ms. Sandercock, and in most cases Ms. Sandercock required more engagement than Olmsted — generating professional fees at each dispute while the underlying conditions remained unresolved. The work ultimately delivered fell materially short of both the scope established in the December 2019 estimate package and the defined scope of work in the Stipulation of Settlement itself — which was already a narrower scope than what Roussis had established.
The later record reinforced that this pre-signing dispute was not speculative. In August 2021, ALC issued a post-remediation report stating that the apartment had achieved clearance and describing key areas as removed or clean. But in August 2022, Olmsted responded that the agreed scope had not actually been completed, itemizing unfinished work including flooring not removed to slab, retained wall and ceiling materials, and living-room probes that were never cut. In November 2022, both Olmsted and ALC identified additional work still requiring completion. That later sequence is why I view the pre-signing friction as having been about real, material scope deficiencies rather than about abstract disagreement over tactics.
Beyond my personal assessment, the documentary record creates an argument that does not depend on my characterization alone. The same remediation items I was pressing for before the stipulation was filed were later identified by Ms. Sandercock herself as landlord failures in her August 31, 2022 Reply Affirmation (NYSCEF Doc #22, HP 6086/2020, ¶5a-k.) She advised me in February and May 2021 to accept those items as the best available outcome. Seventeen months later, she argued them as the factual basis for restoring the case. The items I believed were being minimized before the stipulation was filed later became the same items used to argue that the landlord had not done what was required. That is why I believe the pre-signing friction was not personal — it was a substantive disagreement about scope, and her own subsequent court filings adopted the position I had been pressing for.
Documented Chronology¶
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jun. 15, 2020 | Sandercock confirms dual mandate: HP first, then SCC damages | Sandercock Correspondence, sequencing email |
| Jun. 16, 2020 | Retainer executed — HP + Supreme Court damages, dual mandate | WT-106B |
| Jun. 22, 2020 | Petition narrowing: "papers do not need to say every single thing" | Archive p. 105 |
| Jun. 23, 2020 | "Usual to allow the landlord to do what they want" | Archive p. 126 |
| Jun. 23, 2020 | Olmsted same day: "scope...is too limited" | Archive p. 144 |
| Jun. 28, 2020 | Sandercock presses to remove "sound studio unit G21" from Olmsted report | Archive p. 152 |
| Oct. 28, 2020 | Sandercock conveys landlord expects waivers to be signed | Archive p. 304 |
| Nov. 16, 2020 | Scope reduction framing; Gray pushback — "clearly they want to do as little as possible" | Archive pp. 369–370 |
| Feb. 10, 2021 | Sandercock: "accept what they will do now and test after and argue for more after" | Archive p. 642 |
| Feb. 11, 2021 | Gray: "Ridiculous!" — documented objection on HVAC and contaminated conditions | Archive p. 644 |
| May 10–11, 2021 | Concurrent TA billing pressure (Hubbard/Lockhart) directed at Gray as TA leader | Archive pp. 930, 953 |
| May 11, 2021 | Sandercock: "accept their scope of work...stop asking for things they won't do" | Archive p. 948 |
| May 18, 2021 | Zoom scope meeting — Sandercock, Elizabeth Sandercock, Olmsted, Gray | Archive p. 961 |
| June 29, 2021 | Stipulation of Settlement filed in NYSCEF as Doc #10 | WT-106B |
| Aug. 19, 2021 | Sandercock sends notice of default to landlord's attorney | Archive p. 1070 |
| Sep. 2021–May 2022 | No enforcement motion filed (~10 months after default notice) | WT-117 |
| May 31, 2022 | Sandercock: "we are messing up our ability to get damages" | Archive p. 1259 |
| Jun. 14, 2022 | Motion to Restore filed | NYSCEF Doc #11 |
| Jun. 16, 2022 | Buyout-pressure communications begin two days after the motion filing | Archive p. 1270 |
| Jul. 11, 2022 | Renewed buyout solicitation during the pending motion period | Archive p. 1308 |
| Jul. 13–14, 2022 | Buyout and PAA pressure during the pending motion period | Archive pp. 1310–1311 |
| Aug. 31, 2022 | Reply Affirmation identifies same scope items as landlord failures | NYSCEF Doc #22, ¶5a-k |
| Oct. 15, 2022 | "other tenants are suffering due to your indecision" | Archive p. 1389 |
| Oct. 17, 2022 | "We cannot represent you if you can't accept our advice" — withdrawal threat | Archive p. 1395 |
| Oct. 19, 2022 | "The only person for whom I made a buyout proposal is Christian" | Archive p. 1407 |
| Nov. 4, 2022 | Termination email: "as you invited...we do not and no longer believe that you represented our interests" | Horovitz to Sandercock, signed by all four tenants |
| Nov. 2022 | Substitution of Counsel — Ween & Kozek substituted for Goodfarb & Sandercock | OATH Index 22-1758 |
| Sept. 29, 2023 | Motion to Restore denied on procedural/evidentiary grounds — merits not reached | Decision/Order |
Supporting Binder References¶
| Document | Link |
|---|---|
| Roussis / Total Restoration Scope of Work (Dec 2019) | WT-104B |
| Sandercock Malpractice Framework | Orange Tab B001 |
| Stipulation of Settlement (source text) | WT-106B |
| HP 6086/2020 NYSCEF Docket Analysis | WT-117 |
| Stipulation Compliance Timeline | WT-118 |
| Reply Affirmation (NYSCEF Doc #22) | |
| Motion to Restore (NYSCEF Doc #11) | |
| Decision/Order denying Motion to Restore (NYSCEF Doc #31) | |
| Substitution of Counsel (OATH TH-221) | |
| Sandercock Correspondence Archive | Downloads — Email Correspondence Archives |
END — Response to Q11: Pre-Stipulation Relationship with Sandercock v2.1