Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

There is no simple answer to your question. If you received any compensation from the website owner (a salary, something in kind, or any other consideration for your work), arguably the material you created is "work-for-hire", in which case it is owned by the website owner and you have no ownership rights. However, if the work you created for the website contained materials or content you had previously created, this previously created material was not work-for-hire of someone else, and you did not assign the copyright to the website owner, you may have a basis for asking him/her to remove it from the website. In addition, if you contributed materials via a blog or any other voluntary activity, you may have relinquished ownership of these writings by putting them into the public domain. In any event, you should talk to an attorney knowledgeable in intellectual property matters to determine your rights and defenses, since you have stated that the owner has started legal action.