Former owners of The Stone Fox, The Colonial and Dos Rios Cantina have filed federal lawsuits against the city of Binghamton and Broome County, among other named defendants, for wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution related to the 2021 sexual assault allegations brought against them.

Yaron Kweller, with his brother Leor and Jordan Ringden, were arrested in February 2022 after facing sexual assault allegations following an incident involving two women on Nov. 26, 2021. The charges against Leor Kweller were thrown out in June 2023, and Yaron Kweller and Ringden were acquitted of all charges on Oct. 31, 2023.

On Monday, attorneys for Yaron Kweller announced the filing of a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York against several parties — including the Binghamton Police Department, the Broome County District Attorney’s Office, former District Attorney Michael Korchak and Assistant District Attorney Alyssa Congdon — for constitutional and civil rights violations. Ringden has also filed a civil rights action against the defendants for wrongful arrest.

“As far as our clients go, I do think that this is their first step to really, truly, clearing their name and telling their side of the story,” Elena Fast, Kweller’s attorney, told Pipe Dream.

The complaint alleges local authorities ignored exculpatory evidence and continued pursuing wrongful prosecution and arrest without probable cause. Despite Kweller’s eventual acquittal, he claims the handling of the case irreversibly damaged his reputation and led to the eventual closure of his once-successful businesses.

“The harm inflicted by the defendants has caused irreparable damage to his reputation, professional relationships, and businesses,” a press release on Fast Law Firm’s website reads. “Yaron Kweller’s complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the significant financial and emotional suffering he endured.”

Kweller alleges that local authorities “with malice and knowing that probable cause did not exist” pursued his arrest. The lawsuit claims this violated Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment provisions against unreasonable search and seizure and the right “to be free of prosecution absent probable cause.”

“Our allegations are that the police arrested Mr. Kweller really without having a sufficient case, and they wrongfully arrested him for a rape [in the third degree] when they did not have anything in the fact pattern or anything that was testified to a trial where the complainant said ‘no,’” Fast said.

The Binghamton Police Department and the D.A.’s office declined to comment. A representative for the city of Binghamton did not respond to a request for comment.

Video evidence and cell phone communications were disregarded by the D.A.’s office, according to the court filings, which declared the evidence proved Kweller’s innocence. His legal team referenced a folder in the possession of the two women’s attorney, Thomas Saitta, that contained forensic photographs of texts exchanged after the alleged incident took place. It took more than a year for the D.A.’s office to obtain the folder despite their alleged knowledge of its existence, nor was Kweller’s counsel ever informed of it.

Fast said the folder proved the consensual nature of the encounter between Kweller and his accusers, including the intention of the two women to blackmail him. Under the Brady rule — a doctrine concerning evidence handling in the U.S. justice system — prosecutors must disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense.

The lawsuit also refers to alleged malpractice of the D.A.’s office in appointing Congdon as the bureau chief of the Special Victims Unit despite insufficient prosecutorial experience. The complaint claims Congdon “did not understand her legal obligations as a prosecutor” and that her superiors neglected to step in to correct her errors, which included mistaken interpretations of the law during grand jury procedures.

“A lot of our complaint talks about her mistaken impressions of the law, and that was never corrected, so we are alleging failure to supervise,” Fast said of Congdon.

Fast accused Korchak of failing to recognize Congdon’s lack of sufficient training and step in after she expressed concerns about her ability to prosecute a high-profile case.

Ringden’s complaint echoed Kweller’s claims of constitutional and civil rights violations by local authorities, referencing malicious prosecution, false arrest and Brady violations. Ringden was originally charged with two counts of third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance and third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance in addition to several sexual abuse charges.

Despite D.A. Paul Battisti having worked for Kweller in the past, Fast told Pipe Dream she was not concerned about any potential conflict of interest, as “Battisti is not a party to the action” and does not represent Kweller at this point.

Kweller and his legal team hope to highlight systematic failures and abuses of power within Broome County to prevent similar situations in the future.

“We have this understanding within the criminal justice community and in our cases that it’s fair game, and you get fair dealing, and that’s not what we had here from the D.A.’s office,” Fast said.