Photograph of the Windermere by edEx on Flickr A judge ordered that the second-oldest apartment building in New York City must be repaired by its owners. The Windermere, at West 57th Street and Ninth Avenue, has been the scene of of landlord and tenant struggles and evacuations as the fire department has found its conditions unsafe. The NY Times reports that Judge Karen Smith ordered "the permanent repair and restoration" of the building. The......

While a judge deliberates on whether Harry Potter superfan Steve Vander Ark and his publisher violated copyright law by producing a lexicon based on J.K. Rowling’s hit novels, the 50-year-old librarian has simply been trying to keep it together. This week he told the New Yorker all about the trauma caused by the recent trial, during which he broke down in tears. Hoping for acknowledgment from his idol, Vander Ark would look at Rowling during......

A State Supreme Court judge has issued a “preliminary injunction” prohibiting the city from turning the 78-year-old Pavilion in Union Square park into a restaurant. Last week the court ruled that the $21 million overhaul to the north end of the park could proceed while a lawsuit brought by community groups moves forward, but temporary stalled work on the Pavilion. Opponents object to what they see as the privatization of park space and insist the......

A Staten Island woman has filed a lawsuit against the NY State Lottery, claiming that the ads for Take Five scratch-off lotto tickets were misleading about the odds. A lawyer for "M. Mckee" said, "They're trying to claim the odds are 1-in-9 when they're actually 1-in-109." The most likely scenario is actually a "Quick Pick Free Play." The NY State Lottery explains, "The clear message is that the 1-in-9 odds definitely includes winning a......

Last September three women filed a lawsuit against Mayor Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg LP, accusing Bloomberg of being personally responsible for creating a "systemic, top-down culture of discrimination," and accusing Bloomberg LP CEO Lex Fenwick of firing two pregnant employees with this gangsta riposte: “I'm not having any pregnant bitches working for me.” Now other 54 women have joined the lawsuit, after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC] conducted interviews with 478 woman who took maternity......

Last week Governor Paterson signed off on a new tax law requiring out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax from consumers in New York State. Like other states, New York requires residents to pay tax on out-of-state purchases for which sales tax wasn’t collected. The big argument is over who’s responsible for collecting; the new law puts that onus vendors like Amazon, which is now fighting the bill in State Supreme Court. What’s interesting is that......

UPDATE: NY1's first report yesterday on the Union Square Pavilion lawsuit has been corrected. It turns out that, contrary to the initial news, the injunction stopping work on the park’s 78-year-old Pavilion is still in effect. While parts of the planned renovation to the north end of the park can now proceed, including construction of the expanded playground, the judge has also temporarily stopped the city from cutting down any trees while a lawsuit brought......

A novelist and her husband are suing a Manhattan hotel for negligence after their cats almost died at the hotel. Marisha Pessl and Nicola Caiano claim that the cleaning staff at the AKA Sutton Place hotel, which says it's "pet-friendly," left out some rat poison--which was eaten by their three cats. The Post reports Pessl, who wrote Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and Caiano decided to relocate to the AKA SP after their Tribeca apartment......

A class action lawsuit was filed in New York federal court yesterday, alleging that real estate firm "Brown Harris Stevens Brooklyn LLC (BHS) and its senior vice president and two real estate agents discriminate against families with children attempting to rent apartments in Brooklyn." Park Slope parents, and even soon-to-be stroller pushers, may be having a hard time finding the perfect brownstone. Seems Brown Harris Stevens, and other real estate agents (see: Craigslist), are discriminating......

A state judge has issued a temporary restraining order to stop the city’s $21 million overhaul of the north end of Union Square Park, which would install a new restaurant in the historic Pavilion, redesign two playgrounds and repave asphalt where the Greenmarket had been operating. A coalition of community groups and parks advocates who brought the lawsuit say the city needs to get approval from the state legislature before privatizing part of the park,......

Like Kramer and Frank Costanza before her, Katerina Pew designed a bra made just for her -- except her biggest problem wasn't naming it (the Bro? The Manzier?). The 38-year-old struggling, single mom was sick and tired of bra straps, but her bra-making brainstorm only resulted in a lawsuit against Victoria's Secret after they allegedly stole her idea. Pew thought of the idea in 1999 and materialized it a year later, saying of her design......

As the the Harry Potter copyright infringement trial drew to a close yesterday, the judge urged the two parties to use their “imaginations” and agree to a settlement. Judge Robert Patterson professed a love of literature and invoked Charles Dickens’s Bleak House as cautionary tale, “A very sad story. Litigation isn’t always the best way to solve things." But in their closing arguments, attorneys for both sides seemed far from a settlement. Rowling’s lawyers argue......

The 50-year-old librarian on the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Harry Potter author was driven to tears yesterday while testifying in a Manhattan courtroom. Steven Jan Vander Ark (pictured), a former Star Trek fan from Michigan whose exhaustive website The Harry Potter Lexicon would be published in a print version by RDR Books, told lawyers that he was devastated by the lashing he’s received from J.K. Rowling and "the Harry......

There’s troubling news today for fans of fantasy tween novel franchises: Choking back tears in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling testified that her lawsuit to stop the publication of an unauthorized “Harry Potter Lexicon” has caused her such stress and heartache that it “decimated the demands of my creative work for the last month. You lose the threads, you worry if you’ll ever be able to pick them up again. I......

Beloved and trendy frozen treat purveyor Pinkberry has agreed to a settlement in the lawsuit where the chain was accused of misrepresenting its product as "frozen yogurt" and as "all-natural." Pinkberry isn't admitting any wrongdoing but is, the NY Times reports, giving $750,000 to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, a food collection agency, and Para Los Niños, a nonprofit family service organization, plus paying legals fees of "plaintiff, Lisa Sutton, who said she......

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is testifying in a Manhattan federal courtroom this morning against a small publisher trying to release an encyclopedia based on her work. In the past, Rowling has been supportive of the fan-based websites that explore her novels, but when RDR Books announced last fall that it would be publishing a book version of the The Harry Potter Lexicon website, Rowling filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement. Lawyers for RDR Books......

Some funny new details emerged yesterday in the trial of the retired cop infamous for aggressively silencing noisy passengers on the Long Island Railroad. John Clifford stood accused of assaulting a woman whose hand he twice slapped in March 2007 after she tried to intervene in his scolding of cell-phone talker Nicholas Bender. And if Jerry Seinfeld is looking for material for his new TV series, he’s got all the fodder he needs in yesterday's......

Long Island Rail Road etiquette enforcer John Clifford – famous for his crusade against rude behavior during his morning commute – was in court yesterday to face charges stemming from a train altercation in March 2007. The retired cop-turned-lawyer stands accused of, among other things, slapping a woman who dared intervene while Clifford berated another passenger for talking loudly on his cell phone. Clifford’s been arrested or ticketed eight times for similar incidents, such as......

How will Lifetime transition from "woman in distress seeks revenge" movies to "hot tranny mess" is beyond us, but The NY Times reports that NBC Universal, Bravo's parent company, has lost their precious “Project Runway" to the "femme-centric" (per Variety) network. NBC Universal filed a lawsuit in Manhattan today, accusing the show's owner, the Weinstein Company, of violating rights by pairing up with Lifetime, which offered $150 million. From the Times:The suit asserts Harvey Weinstein,......

In what will be the largest class action suit ever brought by New York restaurant employees, employees are suing Starbucks for violating a state law that prohibits management from receiving part of workers’ tips. At Starbucks, shift supervisors share the pooled tips with baristas, prompting a suit from former Forest Hills barista Jeana Barenboim, on behalf of at least 2,000 Starbucks baristas in NY who are owed at least $5 million. The lawsuit comes on......

Staring down the barrel of a $10 million lawsuit, American Apparel has spoken out about their billboard displaying Woody Allen's image (circa Annie Hall). Chances are the law will find them about as innocent as their barely-dressed teen models. The company says it “was meant strictly as a social parody," and even though those two billboards are normally used for commercial reasons, they're selling the idea that they "also use them as a vehicle for......

Woody Allen on Allen Street via Susan NYC's Flickr. Last year Woody Allen kicked off the scantily clad teen models usually draped over American Apparel billboards, and seemingly made himself the new face of Dov Charney's clothing empire. In both LA and NYC, his image (taken from Annie Hall) hung above city streets along with Yiddish writing paired up with their logo. Now it's being reported that Allen (despite his fondness of young ladies)......

An appellate court ruled the City of New York cannot limit its liability in the 2003 Staten Island Ferry crash that left 11 dead and injured over a hundred others. This ruling upholds last year's decision from a U.S District Judge; the city could appeal with the Supreme Court, but the Staten Island Advance says "that option doesn't seem likely." The city had wanted to cap the amount of the awards to the value of......

The conversion of an 85-acre stretch of Brooklyn waterfront from post-industrial decay to pristine park is continuing apace, as bulldozers have begun demolishing the hulking warehouses that have barred access to the East River for years. But a Sierra Club lawsuit could yet stall the long-planned urban renewal project, and outcry from some community groups remains undiminished. The Sierra Club objects to the “wave-calming systems and floating walkways” that are to be installed along five......

A Brooklyn family has filed a claim of notice that they plan to sue the City, after 14-year-old Matthew Alba (pictured) received a broken wrist and a cut chin allegedly at the hands of a dean at PS 369 in Downtown Brooklyn. In a one-sided account, Matthew Alba told the NY Post that he had arrived at detention when an assistant dean "went ballistic" on him and grabbed his hand, holding it tightly for three......

Carlos Zelayo is suing Madison Square Garden for continuing to serve a visibly drunk off-duty cop at a college basketball game, before the man left the arena and killed Zelayo's son and put his wife in a coma, from which she hasn't emerged. Kevin Freibott is the Jersey City cop currently serving an 11-year sentence for vehicular homicide. He killed two-year-old Jose Carlo Zelayo (pictured) on the Pulaski Skyway. Lawyers for MSG describe Zelayo's lawsuit......

Juicy Campus, the multi-college message board where students anonymously post malicious comments about each other, is facing legal action in New Jersey, where prosecutors have subpoenaed the website’s records. The NJ Attorney General is trying to bring the site down on a technicality of sorts, by accusing Juicy Campus of violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act – because while the site claims it doesn't allow offensive material, there is no way for users to report......

A married investment broker in his 30s is suing a midtown strip club because one of his dancers hurt him real bad--and not just emotionally. Stephen Chang, who is married and works for an unnamed investment firm, went to the Hot Lap Dance Club [really NSFW beyond the homepage] where his dancer's moves were a little too hot. Last November, Chang was enjoying a lap dance at the club. His dancer apparently got too acrobatic;......

Screen grab of employee web tracking software A Manhattan court upheld the firing of city employee Toquir Choudhri for doing too much Web browsing on the City's time. Choudri, who was an education analyst for the Department of Education's Human Resources department, was fired in 2006 for spending far too much time online. He had been formally warned to knock of his Web-wandering ways, but an internal audit showed that despite the warning, Choudri......

A Gramercy Park co-op board is suing the residents of one of the building's units for dressing up their interior door with holiday decorations. Richard Belza and his roommate Andrew Meehan have been decorating their apartment door for holidays like the 4th of July, Halloween, Christmas Valentine's Day, and Easter. Belza is a floral designer and has a knack for decorating, so he doesn't understand why he is being sued. He told the New York......