Listen to this articleA group of Engel Burman entities have filed a lawsuit against former company principal Scott Burman to claw back some $15 million in money the plaintiffs claim he did not earn.
The suit, filed Thursday in Nassau County State Supreme Court, is also seeking an additional $7.5 million in punitive damages and to halt any future payments to Burman from the company’s projects.
The plaintiffs, which include EB Construction Group LLC, Engel Burman Management, LLC and more than a dozen of the firm’s project entities, claim that Burman failed to devote “the appropriate time and effort” on the development company’s projects “in violation of his contractual and fiduciary duties,” according to the lawsuit, adding that Burman “regularly failed to come to work and instead focused on self-aggrandizement and self-promotion through a series of speaking engagements and public appearances where he took credit for work that he did not perform.”
The 45-page lawsuit alleges that Burman collected more than $13.3 million in development fees, construction fees and salary over a six-year period for work performed by others in the company. The suit also alleges that Burman spoke at public events and took credit for heading up developments that the other members of the firm actually accomplished, including the $370 million mixed-use project in Long Beach that company principals Steven Krieger and David Burman led the development of and of which EB principal Jonathan Weiss headed construction.
Other claims in the lawsuit allege that Scott Burman was frequently absent from the firm’s offices and failed to respond to a state tax audit which resulted in an expanded audit and over $1.37 million of unpaid sales tax, interest, and penalties to the state because of his mismanagement. The suit also alleges that Burman used company money without authorization to contribute to charitable organizations in his name.
The lawsuit was filed less than four months after Burman sued his father Jan Burman, brother David, Krieger, Weiss and an executive of his family’s firm, for $14 million for shutting him out of their prolific real estate development business.
Four of the former Engel Burman principals formed a new company, B2K Development, in Nov. 2022 without Scott Burman. The principals called it a “natural evolution of Engel Burman,” one of the most prolific and successful developers of multifamily communities and assisted living facilities in the area.
After the split with his family and former firm, Scott Burman formed a new company called Burman RE. The new firm was part of the buying group that acquired the Broadway Commons mall in Hicksville for $40 million earlier this month.
Attorney Glen Waldman, of the Coral Gables, Fla. office of Armstrong Teasdale, who represents the plaintiffs in the new suit, said it shouldn’t be considered a countersuit in response to Scott Burman’s filing in Oct. 2023, which remains pending.
“My clients filed this lawsuit because investigation has revealed that Scott did not earn the dollars he received and by his fiduciary actions has put the company in harms way,” Waldman told LIBN. “This is simply our effort to get back monies that he received that he didn’t earn and not entitled to and the harm he did to the company.”
In response to the lawsuit, Scott Burman said: “The pleading is rife with inaccuracies and pettiness. We will deal with it in due course.”
