Auffray v. Columbia and the Dispute over College Walk
With the closure of College Walk in 2023, many residents of Morningside Heights were left disgruntled by the loss of a historical pathway to traverse the university campus. Hence, in January 2025, petitioners filed a Verified Amended Petition in the New York County Supreme Court against Columbia University, its trustees and former president, and several municipal defendants. According to the pleading, the closure is unlawful on four independent legal grounds: a claimed public pedestrian easement originating in 1953 when the city closed the street and transferred property interests; an Article 78 proceeding designed to compel the City to enforce public access against the university; a theory of public nuisance based on the loss of a widely used pedestrian corridor; and disability-access claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Each of these arguments depends, directly or indirectly, on the existence of a legally enforceable right of public passage over College Walk. Without such a right, the petition is difficult to sustain.
On the present record, however, the petitioners’ case lacks a sufficiently clear property interest, relies on a procedural form of action ill-suited to the relief sought, and invokes nuisance and disability statutes in ways that sit uneasily with the governing legal standards. The result is a pleading that describes a recognizable civic grievance, yet is hard pressed to translate that grievance into a legally cognizable right.
At the core of the petitioners’ case is a 1953 letter from Manhattan Borough President Robert Wagner, suggesting that the agreement “should be made whereby the City retains a perpetual easement for the right of pedestrian passage.” The phrasing could plausibly support an inference that the issue of public pedestrian access was taken into consideration at the time. Yet the language of the executed agreement appears more circumscribed, providing that the City retains an easement “over the proposed pedestrian walk” and referring to “free and unhampered access” retained by the City for use of the Fire Department and other municipal agencies responsible for city services. This agreement, while acknowledging pedestrian passage as a physical feature of the space, ties the specific purpose of the easement to governmental operations rather than to a general right of public traversal. Moreover, the evidentiary record as reflected in the case docket does not materially extend beyond the Wagner letter in substantiating a broader public easement: there is no developed showing of contemporaneous municipal minutes, press coverage, or subsequent City conduct treating College Walk as a legally recognized public right-of-way.
An easement held by the City for municipal purposes differs from a public easement enforceable by individual members of the public, as established in Huggins v. Castle Estates, Inc. (1975). The former permits the City to maintain access for functions such as utilities or emergency response; the latter creates a right that private individuals may invoke to demand continued passage. The City’s cross-motion memorandum argues precisely this point, contending that Borough President Wagner’s proposed language concerning a “perpetual” pedestrian easement never appeared in the final agreement and that the qualifying clause referring to municipal departments defines the scope of the retained right. Even if a court were ultimately persuaded that the easement was intended to facilitate pedestrian movement, the presently available documents do not conclusively establish that the right was meant to benefit the public at large rather than the City itself.
This uncertainty concerning the underlying property interest affects the remainder of the petition. The plaintiffs invoke Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, which authorizes judicial review of administrative action and, in certain circumstances, permits courts to issue a writ of mandamus compelling a government official to perform a ministerial duty. Yet mandamus relief requires a “clear legal right” to the requested action and a corresponding nondiscretionary obligation on the part of the governmental defendant. New York courts have consistently held that mandamus cannot be used to compel discretionary policy choices or to create duties that the law does not already impose. Klostermann v. Cuomo (1984), for instance, upheld that mandamus is available only when the petitioner can demonstrate a specific statutory duty that the government has failed to perform. In Klostermann specifically, the “failed duty” was the State’s statutory obligation to provide and implement adequate discharge planning and transitional services for involuntarily committed mental health patients prior to their release from state psychiatric institutions.
Within this context, the petition faces an immediate legal challenge. Article 78 proceedings are designed primarily to review governmental determinations or compel officials to carry out established legal obligations. The petitioners, however, are not challenging a discrete municipal decision; rather, they seek a court order directing the City to intervene against a private property owner. The City’s memorandum therefore argues that it neither caused the closure nor possesses the authority to require Columbia to provide public access across privately owned land. Without a clearly established municipal easement benefiting the public, the City lacks a legal duty to enforce such access. Under those circumstances, mandamus would effectively create a new governmental obligation rather than enforce an existing one, a use of Article 78 that courts have historically rejected. Even if a public easement exists, a court cannot use mandamus to compel it to file suit or to dictate how it enforces that interest, as established by Timothy Michael Hudson v. Town of Orchard Park Zoning Board of Appeals (2023).
By the same token, the petition’s public nuisance claim fails to meet New York’s long-standing requirement of “special injury.” Public nuisance traditionally refers to conduct that interferes with rights common to the general public, such as obstruction of public highways or pollution affecting a community’s health. Because such harms affect many people simultaneously, the primary authority to seek abatement ordinarily belongs to the government rather than to individual citizens. In Monaghan v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre (2018), the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division explained that a private action for public nuisance requires a showing that the plaintiff sustained damages different in kind from those experienced by the community. Thus, as established by 532 Madison Ave. Gourmet Foods, Inc. v. Finlandia Ctr., Inc. (2001), private plaintiffs may bring suit only when they can demonstrate a special injury distinct from the harm suffered by the public at large.
This requirement has proven decisive in numerous cases. In Carlino v. Shapiro (2020), for instance, the court dismissed a public nuisance claim arising from neighborhood disturbances because the alleged injuries—noise, inconvenience, and diminished enjoyment of property—were shared by other residents in the vicinity and therefore lacked the individualized character necessary to sustain a private action. Likewise, in C.F. v. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (2020), the court described public nuisance as a wrong “against the State,” stating that governmental authorities ordinarily possess the primary responsibility for addressing conditions affecting the public as a whole.
Viewed through this lens, the petitioners’ nuisance theory appears vulnerable at best. The Verified Amended Petition characterizes the closure of College Walk as a public nuisance because it restricts pedestrian movement and allegedly burdens individuals with mobility impairments. Yet the harms described—longer walking routes, inconvenience, and the frustration of losing a familiar pathway—are precisely the sort of generalized injuries that courts have deemed insufficient to support private nuisance actions. Indeed, the relief requested by the petitioners further reinforces the point: they ask the court to reopen the walkway for all members of the public, a remedy that presupposes a collective rather than individualized harm. Nuisance doctrine typically demands a more particularized injury before a private plaintiff may invoke the courts’ equitable powers.
Lastly, the petition attempts to introduce disability-access statutes. The Americans with Disabilities Act contains several distinct titles governing different categories of defendants. Title II applies to public entities and prohibits discrimination by state and local governments in the provision of services, programs, or activities. Title III, by contrast, regulates private entities operating places of public accommodation and focuses primarily on accessibility and equal enjoyment of facilities. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act similarly prohibits disability discrimination by programs receiving federal financial assistance. Each provision carries its own elements, defenses, and remedial scheme.
The petition, at certain points, describes Columbia University as a “place of public accommodation” under 42 U.S.C. § 12182, language that is associated with Title III. At other points it characterizes the City as a “public entity” liable under Title II, while simultaneously asserting violations of § 504. These differences matter because the statutes impose obligations on different actors and authorize different forms of relief. A Title II claim against the City would require showing that a governmental service or facility excluded individuals with disabilities. A Title III claim against Columbia would focus on whether the university denied equal access to a place of public accommodation within its control. The City’s cross-motion therefore argues that it cannot be liable under Title II because it neither owns nor operates the walkway as a municipal facility: “the City does not own College Walk and simply had no involvement whatsoever in the decision to restrict public access to the pedestrian walkway.” It follows that petitioners “fail to plead facts challenging City-specific conduct on public streets sufficient to confer liability” under the ADA or § 504. Columbia’s memorandum, for its part, attacks the claim at a different level, arguing that “the Petition fails to state a claim under the ADA and Section 504” because it does not identify any qualifying statutory violation within the scope of those provisions.
In the end, the controversy surrounding College Walk exposes a familiar divide between what the public believes it is entitled to, and what the law actually permits. To residents accustomed to crossing the campus, the closure of the walkway feels like the loss of a neighborhood street. In the language of property law, however, the question is far more technical: whether the public possesses a recorded servitude entitling it to continued passage. Until that question is resolved, the remaining claims—whether in terms of mandamus, nuisance, or disability law—rest on an uncertain foundation.
Yet, even if the petitioners’ legal theories are flawed, their civic concern is not. Though Columbia claims the right to control access to its property, the University sits at the center of a dense residential area where, over time, everyday travel routes have come to depend on that space. The closure of College Walk removes what had long functioned, in practice if not in law, as an east–west corridor across a large institutional block. For individuals with limited mobility, this creates inconvenient detours, often involving multiple intersections along Broadway or Amsterdam Avenue; these conditions increase both travel distance and travel time compared to the former route. The dispute therefore concerns not only the scope of Columbia’s legal rights, but also the consequences of exercising those rights within a neighborhood that has come to rely on access across its campus.
Edited by Alex Kekst
This piece was reviewed and finalized by Gabi Fabozzi, Qizhen (Kiara Ba), and Jasmine Lianalyn Rocha.