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Before civil court, April 23
The claims went first to the Bureau of Law and Adjustment in the Department of Finance, to be assessed by the Comptroller. Within a few days he would summon the business owners to be questioned. In a typical case, based on that information, his office would decide what the city owed. Only when the claimant and the city could not agree on the sum did a claim result in legal proceedings in the city's civil courts.
However, these were not typical claims. Although claims against the city were not unusual, and in fact increasingly common in the the years of the Great Depression, the government's liability for damage resulting from a riot was apparently not well known. Newspaper stories about the claims included details of statute on which Rosenstein based the claims: section 71 of the General Municipal Law, dating from 1855. It read, “A city or county shall be liable to a person whose property is destroyed or injured therein by a mob or riot for the damages sustained thereby” provided that person did not contribute to the damage, had used all reasonable diligence to prevent damage, notified the authorities of the threat to their property, and brought the action within three months. With only a month having passed since the night of the disorder, the claims had clearly been filed before the deadline. Whether the business owners had met the other requirements of the statute were questions that the city's lawyers, the Corporation Counsel, would have to answer.
In the meantime, two months remained in which additional claims could be filed.