In the News
Of 'Alice's Restaurant' and Manalapan dirt
MARK ROSMAN
Thanksgiving found me taking out my vintage vinyl copy of "Alice's Restaurant" and listening to Arlo Guthrie's classic tune, which somehow connects an incident of littering with the Vietnam War draft.

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, it is basically this: Guthrie was arrested and charged with littering in an incident in Massachusetts, and sometime later his arrest record became an issue that apparently prevented him from being drafted into the Army.

As Guthrie put it in his song, being a convicted litterbug made him unfit for a task that would have required him to kill people in the name of the United States.

I am beginning to think Manalapan is trapped in its own version of "Alice's Restaurant" as the case of Manalapan vs. Moskovitz moves forward.

For the uninformed, Stuart Moskovitz served as Manalapan's municipal attorney in 2005. That year the township closed on the purchase of two single-family homes and properties on Route 522, just in front of the Manalapan Recreation Center.

Manalapan officials are now claiming in a lawsuit against Moskovitz that in his capacity as the township attorney, he did not provide the municipality with the appropriate legal protection that would be needed in the event that contamination was found on the Route 522 properties that had been purchased.

Contaminated soil was, in fact, discovered. A cleanup of that contamination has been promised. Keep that in mind.

The township's purchase of the two Route 522 homes and properties came about as the result of a court order that settled litigation that had been filed against Manalapan by the property owners.

According to Moskovitz, "This will be the first time in history that an attorney has been charged with legal malpractice for following a court order, which is all we did."

The past few months have seen the case of Manalapan vs. Moskovitz come before a pair of state Superior Court judges several times on various motions. The case remains open, and I have no idea how long it will continue. Who knows? Maybe we will still be writing about this when the next election rolls around in Manalapan.

And then last week, a new wrinkle. News broke that the legal firm that is representing Manalapan in the case had subpoenaed Google, an Internet service, and demanded that the company provide information related to an Internet blog known as da Truth Squad.

Google owns the blog site where da Truth Squad posts.

An attorney representing Manalapan has stated in court papers that Moskovitz is the blogger known as da Truth Squad.

Moskovitz has previously stated that he is not da Truth Squad, and he reiterated that position last week. He acknowledged, when I asked him, that he cannot prove he is not da Truth Squad.

However, he did add a little fuel to the fire when he made the following offer to Manalapan Mayor Andrew Lucas, Deputy Mayor Michelle Roth and Township Committeeman Richard Klauber.

"I will agree to donate $100,000 to the Manalapan Recreation Center if it is proven that I'm da Truth Squad as long as Roth, Lucas and Klauber agree that as soon as it's proven that I'm not da Truth Squad, they will resign immediately from the Township Committee and agree not to run again or take as an appointment any elected or political office in the state of New Jersey ever again, under penalty of $100,000 in liquidated damages each, should they violate that agreement. I will agree to this as long as and only as long as the three of them agree to it within the next two weeks," Moskovitz said.

Roth, Lucas and Klauber fired their own salvo back at Moskovitz when they said, "By a unanimous vote of the governing body, a decision was made to pursue a legal malpractice case against Stuart Moskovitz for his failure to protect the town from the contamination at the Dreyer house, which will potentially cost the town in excess of $100,000 to remediate.

"Despite his protestations to the contrary, this is not a personal vendetta against him, but was a decision that would have been made against any township attorney who committed such malpractice. Due to a persistent problem with unethical and illegal leaks from executive session, a determination was made by the entire governing body to have this matter put in a black box to avoid further compromise of the town's case and interest in this matter. The governing body is relying on the expertise of our attorney in this matter and defer to him on how to best handle this case," Lucas, Roth and Klauber said.

The next court date in the Manalapan vs. Moskovitz civil case is scheduled for Dec. 7 in Freehold Borough.

Meanwhile a legal foundation that was retained by da Truth Squad - whoever he, she or they may be - is attempting to quash the township's subpoena in order to protect the blogger's identity. A court hearing in that matter has been scheduled for Dec. 21. Stay tuned.

Are you confused yet? I think I am.

The blogger known as da Truth Squad has been rattling the cages of Manalapan's elected officials for years. Why is this an issue now?

As politicians and newspaper editors are finding out these days, criticism of our decisions and our actions is now meat for Internet message boards and blogs. We may not like the jabs our anonymous critics deliver, but unless what they have written about us is absolutely libelous and defamatory, we, as public figures, have little recourse.

And so after all of that, we come full circle, and I ask you this question. What does all this have to do with Alice? You remember Alice, don't you? Alice is the contaminated soil at those properties on Route 522. Has anybody seen any soil cleaned up yet? I haven't.

Maybe Arlo Guthrie is available to set this whole sordid story to a catchy tune on compact disc, not vinyl, of course.

Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the News Transcript.