A years-long legal battle between real estate mogul Gary Barnett and two of his former business partners could be headed for its next chapter.
The Extell Development founder and chairman is taking his case with Yoel Weber and Yoel Leonorovitz to an appeals court.
The conflict goes back to 2022, when Weber and Leonorovitz sued Barnett, HP Stock LLC — an entity solely owned by him — and Extell Development for over $15 million in allegedly unpaid “fees for electrical contracting” performed at four of Barnett’s projects.
Barnett fired back by filing counterclaims, arguing that since 2014 he owned a 33.3 percent ownership interest — as did each Weber and Leonorovitz — in Horsepower Electric and Maintenance Corp, a contractor that performed the works.
Additionally, Barnett claimed that he owns one third — alongside Weber and Leonorovitz — of Pascack Entities, a company that in 2016 purchased six properties in Rockland County, New York. By 2023, these properties were sold, and Barnett sought to recover his share of “the approximately $21 million in proceeds.”
Around the same time, a separate lawsuit brought by Barnett against Weber and Leonorovitz was discontinued. The Extell founder had alleged that he was never told about a $6 million sale of two Brooklyn properties he and his partners had bought together, but their attorneys disproved the allegations with a series of emails.
In December 2023, however, Barnett scored a win, when Justice Ruchelsman issued a freeze on nearly $5.3 million “until Defendant Barnett’s ownership interest in the Pascack properties was decided.”
In 2024 and 2025, the sides went back and forth with Barnett trying to strike Weber and Leonorovitz’s pleadings and failing to object or reply to plaintiffs’ subpoenas.
On March 18 this year, Judge Cenceria P. Edwards denied Barnett’s motions to strike the pleadings, noting that Weber and Leonorovitz had already handed over 87,000 documents, while Barnett’s legal team failed to “provide an affirmation of good faith.”
Barnett didn’t accept the blow and appealed the decision in an April 28 filing.
Attorneys for both sides, Extell, and Weber didn’t return requests for comment ahead of publication.
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