Filmmaker in Giuliani spat sues Southampton

A documentary filmmaker who was arrested three years ago after a street-corner dust-up in Bridgehampton with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has sued Southampton Town and its police department for $25 million, alleging false arrest, conspiracy and defamation of character.

The suit by John McCluskey, filed May 15 in federal U.S. District Court in Central Islip, charges town police conspired with Giuliani, town judges and others to arrest and humiliate him on false charges, which he said were ultimately dropped.

In the suit, McCluskey, 71, who is acting as his own lawyer, acknowledges that when he spotted Giuliani on Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton on May 23, 2009, he "reminded him of their past." McCluskey charges that Giuliani as a former Manhattan federal prosecutor, "falsely charged, harassed and relentlessly persecuted" him, causing him to lose his publishing business and Westchester home. The case involved Giuliani's pursuit of a McCluskey tax shelter.

A Southampton judge at the time granted Giuliani and his wife Judith an order of protection against McCluskey. Giuliani said in a complaint at the time that McCluskey followed him across Montauk Highway saying, "I am going to hit you in the face." Giuliani retorted, "Bring it on," according to news reports.

Giuliani, who is not named as a defendant in the suit, did not respond to requests for comment through his company and agent.

After McCluskey spoke to him on the street, Giuliani "began screaming hysterically," saying, "Everyone I put in jail deserved it," the suit says. McCluskey said he never had been in jail up to that point.

Town traffic agents took McCluskey's driver's license and detained him until the arrival of police, who arrested him, the suit says. Charged with harassment, McCluskey said he was handcuffed and taken to the Westhampton Police station, but denied the ability to view the complaint against him. He spent four hours in jail and was released on $100 bail.

McCluskey charges he was "driven to financial ruin by . . . the false charges and the subsequent ruinous publicity in a worldwide press branding him as a lunatic madman."

He said in his lawsuit that Southampton police twice appeared at his home to arrest him while he was out of the country -- actions that caused his son and wife such distress that she divorced him in March after 47 years of marriage.

Ultimately, McCluskey alleged the Southampton court and the DA chose to drop the case despite his demand for a jury trial -- "leaving him to suffer a totally destroyed reputation worldwide for the rest of his life."

Calls to McCluskey's Amagansett home and film company, Arden Communications, were not answered. Southampton Police Chief William Wilson Jr., who joined the force last year, prior to the incident, said he wasn't aware of the suit.

Jeltje DeJong, an attorney for the town, didn't respond to requests for comment.