The city's Law Department has filed two more lawsuits against stores that exploit a perceived loophole in the city's obscene cigarette tax law. You'll recall that New York Smokes, a retail tobacco outlet on Staten Island, was making bank selling customers loose tobacco, which is taxed at a far lower rate than cigarettes. Customers would then roll their own smokes in the store using cigarette stuffing machines, walking out with a pack for about $6—far less than the average $13 price. But then the city cracked down on that enterprise, and now the guv'ment is going after two more shops. more ›

Fed up with being stonewalled by the NYPD, the family of Mathieu Lefevre—an artist who was killed by a flatbed truck driver while riding his bike in Williamsburg in October—has filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court. At the beginning of December, the NYPD rejected the family's request for information under the Freedom of Information Law [FOIL], informing their lawyer that the investigation into Lefevre's death was ongoing, and therefore the NYPD would not share any documents related to said "investigation." You can read the lawsuit in full below. more ›

The company that manufactures Skee-Ball—the dull, repetitive game beloved by children and inebriated simpletons—is going after the Skee-Ball themed Williamsburg bar Full Circle, filing a lawsuit against the owners for trademark infringement. Full Circle has three Skee-Ball games, and owners Eric Pavony and Evan Tobias also founded a "Brewskee-Ball" League in 2005, after obtaining verbal permission from Skee-Ball, Inc. during a meeting with the company's CEO in Pennsylvania. But now it seems Skee-Ball has had a change of heart. more ›

A group of emotionally scarred commuters who were trapped on an A train for eight hours overnight during last year's Christmas weekend blizzard are suing the MTA. Nearly 500 souls were stuck aboard the train when it ground to a halt between the Aqueduct and Rockaway Boulevard stations around 1 a.m. on December 26th, as three feet of snow piled up around them. Desperation quickly set in: Twitter user OMJohnnyG wrote, "Son!!! I wanna go home!!! Dudes on the train talking about cannibalism lol I want out!!!" more ›

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Christmas Day underwear bomber, a man who helped stop the would-be bomber before he could blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit is suing for $10 million. Theophilus Maranga, a Dutchess County resident, has filed the lawsuit against thwarted terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Delta Air Lines, and Air France-KLM. In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday, Maranga says he “risked his life” by jumping on Umar Faroul Abdulmutallab after the Nigerian student lit his shorts on fire. more ›

For the third time in five years, B&H Photo and Video is being sued by employees who say the company has denied them promotions because of race or gender. Bronx residents Luis Santana and Carlos Marchand filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing the huge retailer of denying them promotions and raises because they are Hispanic, the Daily News reports. And their lawyer says he'll make it a class action lawsuit if more people come forward (which, considering B&H's track record, is a definite possibility). more ›

A pedestrian who was sued by a cyclist that struck her in Central Park this summer has countersued. According to the lawsuit obtained by the Post, 28-year-old Meghan Rohan alleges that 46-year-old Sabine Von Sengbusch had "total disregard" when she hit Rohan and shattered her elbow. more ›

A cyclist dares to challenge the behavior of a pedestrian in Central Park, and the New York Post cannot BELIEVE the injustice. 46-year-old Sabine von Sengbusch is suing 28-year-old Meghan Rohan after von Sengbusch's bike struck Rohan after she allegedly walked into the bike lane near 69th Street and East Drive. Rohan shattered her elbow, but the cyclist is claiming the accident caused her "great physical pain and mental anguish." Maybe Rohan can use the Frisbee Defense? more ›

Julie Taymor, the envelope-pushing director who co-created the much-maligned Broadway spectacle Spider-Man: Please Make It Stop Turn Off the Dark, is suing the show's producers. After critics savaged the production before opening night, and several cast members sustained injuries, Taymor was pushed aside by the producers, who made significant changes before officially opening in April to mixed reviews and packed houses. Taymor's lawyer claims his client spent more than seven years creating the musical but was paid just $150,000—and that was five years ago. Now she's come to collect. more ›

A new lawsuit claims that the NYPD let Hispanic cops languish. Former detective Joseph Rivera, who worked the auto crimes division for over ten year is suing the NYPD for only promoting a single Latino cop to detective in the unit since 1997. more ›

Avert your gaze from the rabble on Wall Street to the real victims of the modern economy: highly successful restaurateurs. It's really difficult to manage a restaurant empire when you're getting sued for back pay and lost tips by your staff, says Joe Bastianich, who co-owns Eataly, Babbo, and Del Posto. "Money-hungry lawyers, through frivolous lawsuits, are shaking down the very foundation of Manhattan's restaurant industry," the money-hungry businessman tells the Post. "Someone in Albany needs to understand the agenda, what this is really costing the greatest restaurant city in the world." Despite this harshest of anti-business climates, restaurants in New York City grew by 42% in the last decade. more ›

A New Jersey teenager who seriously injured his leg after jumping down to the street from a fence around High Line is suing the city for $2.5 million, claiming that he was locked in the park and had no choice. "I crushed my knee, rupturing my ACL, and hurt my back. It really messed me up," 18-year-old Kirk Rasnick told the Daily News. Rasnick claims that the injuries he sustained on June 13 have prevented him from playing football during his senior year at Dickinson High School in Jersey City, and "you can't put a price on that." Except in this case: the price is $2.5 million, which works out to be around $700K per missed pep rally. more ›

A former NBC studio technician has filed a lawsuit against the network, claiming that co-workers hatefully insulted his Native American heritage by displaying a stereotypical Indian doll on a noose and calling it his daughter. As you can see from this photo, the doll was wearing a sign identifying it as "Baby Wells," and the ex-employee, Faruq "Peter" Wells, says a co-worker threw the doll at him, saying, "Here's your long-lost daughter!" more ›

Eater today points out an interesting lawsuit currently making its way through the courts against Upper West Side sushi restaurant. Susan Deprado claims that on the night of June 27, 2008, "somewhere around midnight" she received a takeout order of tuna rolls with spicy sauce on the side. Except she says the spicy sauce in question came with a little semen. more ›

A group of black firefighters are back in federal court this week for the next stage in the long-running lawsuit against the FDNY, which they accuse of discriminatory hiring practices. Last year, a judge blocked the FDNY from hiring recruits because he found the FDNY's previous three recruitment exams discriminated against nonwhites. The trial's current phase started off with a bang yesterday, when the plaintiffs submitted a sworn deposition by FDNY official Patricia Kavaler, who testified in 2008 about what she perceived as shady, nepotistic "back room" hiring practices that enabled white firefighter candidates to get hired despite troubling criminal records. more ›

A State Supreme Court judge has tossed a lawsuit filed by a former NYC firefighter who was trying to stop a mosque and community center from being constructed a couple of blocks from the site of the World Trade Center attacks. You may recall this mosque from last summer, when conservatives were going batshit crazy over it, holding ugly, xenophobic demonstrations and ranting on blogs about "Islamic supremacists who seek to desecrate the sacred ground of Ground Zero with a 15-story mega-mosque in a building destroyed in the 911 attacks." Oh, actually, that quote is from today. more ›

While not great for the city's coffers, Mayor Bloomberg's two-and-a-half terms have been good—financially if not emotionally—for discriminated city employees. The Times today has a long piece on discrimination lawsuits in Bloomberg's New York and the results, culled from FOIL requests, are very interesting. During Bloomberg's first two terms "the number of lawsuits by employees accusing the city of discrimination was 12 percent higher than" they were under Giuliani's watch and during that time "the city settled over 400 employee discrimination cases, for more than $69 million." At least one man managed to get two different discrimination settlements out of the city! more ›

If you're laying out in the sun this summer, getting those pretty cancer lines we all desire, and you start to inexplicably smell delicious BBQ, you bathing suit may in fact be cooking you! A Long Island woman is suing a swimwear manufacturer after the underwire of her bikini top gave her third degree burns. more ›

The federal government is being sued for allowing natural gas drilling, which involves the potentially harmful "fracking" technique, without conducting a full environmental review. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced a lawsuit yesterday that seeks to compel federal agencies to conduct an environmental review before the regulations authorizing gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin are finalized. Obviously, this goes against the gas industry's motto of "frack first, question later." more ›

When will people on the street understand that rich people have the right of way? The late Bob Novak understood this, when he just cold plowed into a pedestrian in D.C. and didn't even notice ("He's not dead, that's the main thing," Novak magnanimously said). Now some clod in New York has filed a $100 million lawsuit after he oafishly stuck his foot under a Colombian aristocrat's Mercedes tire. Andres Santo Domingo, a 31-year-old son of billionaire Julio Mario Santo Domingo, allegedly rolled over Ryan Coutu's foot and "slammed his arm with a rear-view mirror," the Daily News reports. Coutu suffered pain in his foot and "nerve damage in his right arm," but hey, at least he got to touch Santo Domingo's Mercedes free of charge. more ›

Normally the phrase is "I bite my thumb at you," but in Staten Island it is apparently "I bite your thumb." Just ask Michael Trementano, who is suing his neighbor Bob Ferrari for biting his left thumb so deeply that it was almost amputated. "I'm looking at him, and blood is all over the place, I'm saying 'let go, let go, let go,'" Trementano recalled. "And he's biting me even deeper." more ›

Geoffrey Zakarian, the famous chef/restaurateur whom you may recall from TV's Chopped, is filing for bankruptcy, the Times reports in a sensational article that details a million dollar class action lawsuit against the chef, filed by some 152 disgruntled kitchen staffers. Zakarian runs The Lambs Club and The National in NYC, as well as the food and beverage program at the Water Club at the Borgata in Atlantic City; he's also opening another restaurant at a Miami Beach hotel, and starring in the Next Iron Chef. And yes, he's filing for bankruptcy, presumably so the workers he allegedly screwed out of overtime pay can't bleed him dry. more ›

On the last Friday of every month, advocates for better bicycling conditions in NYC gather in Union Square park to embark on an unplanned group ride. Part social outing, part demonstration, Critical Mass has tangled with the NYPD at least as far back as the Republican Convention, when police set the tone for the weekend's protest by arresting 200 cyclists, many of whom weren't released until well over 24 hours later. Despite lawsuits, the NYPD continues to deploy a heavy police presence at Critical Mass, and last month's ride was no exception, with over 20 cops on motorcycles on hand. The number of cyclists? 10. Here's video... with the right set of eyes you can almost see your tax dollars spiraling down the toilet: more ›

Attorneys for the city are determined to roll over a local unicyclist who won't backpedal on a $3 million lawsuit. You'll recall that Kyle Peterson, a professional circus performer, was issued a disorderly conduct ticket in 2007 for riding his unicycle on the sidewalk at 3 a.m. in Bed-Stuy. Peterson—who we assume was out in search of an ass-kicking, not a summons—was undeterred, and he was ticketed yet again in November of last year for the same offense. Days later, he filed a $3 million lawsuit against the city, arguing that although bicycling on sidewalks is illegal, there's no law against unicycling. more ›

Our long national nightmare is over. Today a judge threw out a multi-million dollar defamation suit against Jerry Seinfeld in regards to statements he said about an author suing his wife over her "cookbook" Deceptively Delicious. So we're all clear: Jerry Seinfeld does not really think that the woman who claimed his wife was a plagiarist was an wacky assassin? Okay? more ›

[Update below] Who's responsible if the newborn baby you adopted turns out to have severe medical problems? If you are one Long Island couple, it is the fault of those rascally lawyers, of course. Meet Lynell and Victor Jeffrey, two parents currently engaged in a lawsuit against adoption attorneys Aaron Britvan and Alyssa Seiden. Ellington, the baby boy the Jeffreys adopted from an Indiana woman in August 2006, turns out to have severe neurological deficits which they weren't told about before they got him. more ›

Sometimes you hate your old lawyer so much you just want to sue them until it hurts. And sometimes, your legal efforts get so redunkulous a judge has to order you to stop suing. To that end: Meet lawyer Donald Schechter! After he had himself relieved from representing Alexander Breytman in a 2003 landlord-tenant dispute, the latter went a little nuts, harassing the attorney with legal filings and letters that called him a whole slew of interesting invectives. more ›

Astoria-based insurance broker Ibrahim Mansi tries to take care of his employees, and when one of his favorite subordinates, Silvia Olveira, celebrated her 33rd birthday in October 2009, he wanted give her the gift of unparalleled pleasure. But everything went terribly wrong as soon as Olveira opened up the present Mansi had put so much thought and effort into selecting. "When I opened it, I saw this thing," Olveira tells the Post. "I was like, what is this?" That "this" was a vibrating dildo. And unbeknownst to Mansi, this sort of gift is frowned upon in today's modern workplace. more ›