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Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

Cases in the civil courts (106)

As the criminal courts resolved the final cases arising from the disorder, actions were commenced in the civil courts. On April 23, 1935, several city papers reported that twenty claims had been filed in the Municipal Court by business owners seeking compensation for their losses from the city on the basis of government’s failure to protect their property. The legal basis for those claims was section 71 of the General Municipal Law, dating from 1855, which 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, and brought the action within three months. By July, 106 suits were before the Municipal Court, with 65 more rejected because they came after the three-month window allowed by the statute. There is no indication that Black business-owners filed any of those suits. Suits came from just over a third of the 450 businesses estimated as having been damaged by the riot. Only twenty-seven businesses are identified in reports of the litigation, most on Lenox Avenue north of 125th Street, with a handful on 7th Avenue near 125th Street.
Pre-Trial Hearings
Prior to their trial, the business owners testified in hearings before the Comptroller. Press reports described the suits as alleging “insufficient police protection during the course of the rioting” and “inefficient” in handling the mob, or police “laxity,” under the headline “Cops not on Job,” or as using “kid glove methods.” Plaintiffs described police failing to respond when they phoned or called at station houses seeking protection, or not arriving until well after their businesses had been looted and destroyed. 
The City on Trial
A full calendar delayed the first trial in the Municipal Court, before Justice Shalleck and a jury of six, until the end of September. The city sent three attorneys, eager to use it a test case to defeat the litigation. The plaintiff William Feinstein owned a liquor store at 452 Lenox Ave, near 132nd St, north of the police Emergency Squad that took up position at Lenox and 130th Street around 9 PM. Sometime near 11 PM, a group of about 30 people gathered at Lenox avenue and 132nd Street, and over the next few hours broke store windows, set fire to some stores and looted others. In this case, the police were present, but ineffective; their efforts to disperse the crowd, which included firing pistols, succeeded only in shifting them from one side of the street to the other. After an hour of shooting and violence, Feinstein’s white manager and his black helper became frightened and fled the store, closing the iron grills over its windows as they left. About an hour later, the crowd struck the store, breaking down the gates, smashing the windows, and making off with bottles of whiskey. Feinstein sought $680 in damages for broken windows and light fixtures and stolen stock; the city countered that what had taken place did not constitute a riot, and that the staff had been negligent in failing to remove the whiskey from the store window once the disorder broke out. The jury took only 45 minutes to decide to award Feinstein $450; it took Justice Shalleck just over a month to decide to uphold that verdict. Several months later, in March 1936, the city also lost in the Supreme Court, which heard larger claims, when seven actions by storeowners seeking $20,000 in damages resulted in $1200 of awards – which did represent a far lower proportion of their claims than had been awarded by juries in the Municipal Court.
Other Sources of Compensation
Six insurance companies joined in suits against the city, while Royal Insurance was a co-defendant in the second case heard in the Municipal Court, at odds with the city in arguing that a riot had occurred, and thus the company had no liability. Approximately two-thirds of Harlem’s businesses had insurance according to a widely reported survey of 47 companies who paid out $147,315 to replace 697 glass windows broken in 300 stores. But insurance was not available throughout Harlem. One plaintiff, Estelle Cohen, complained to Mayor LaGuardia that she had no way of making up her loss of at least $800 as “we do not carry burglary insurance on account of not being able to get it up in that section,” just south of 132nd Street.

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