The lawsuit that won't die

Although a lawsuit against St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village had been put to rest two months ago, court proceedings to sell off everything but the graves themselves were still going on last week in Queens Supreme Court.
According to published reports, the state Appellate Division of the Court called for a hearing to determine what parts of the cemetery were necessary for functioning and therefore could not be sold as part of a court order to pay back a $500,000 debt to Durante Bros. Construction.
However, Frank DeRosa, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Brooklyn, which runs the cemetery, said that a settlement had been reached out of court months ago, and he didn't understand why the court proceedings had continued.
&#8220There is no pending litigation,” DeRosa said.
A lawyer for the Durante Bros. also said that a settlement had been reached and declined to discuss the arrangement, in published reports last week.
The lawsuit, launched in 2004 by Durante, claimed that St. John's had not paid for concrete beams installed to stabilize the soil. To pay off the charge, the Queens court considered selling off the two office buildings, the parking lots, the machine shop, the garage, and the main gate off Metropolitan Avenue.
Nevertheless, the tombstones and graves - whose owners include gangsters like John Gotti and Lucky Luciano, and several politicians including Rep. Charles Addabbo and Mayor John Hylan - were never included in any of the items to be auctioned.