Results tagged “suing”

     

Hand and foot model Christina Ambers fell in love with the doorman at her Upper East Side co-op in 2007, but the superintendent forbade Angel Rotger to see her romantically. And yet the romance between doorman and foot lady could not be so easily snuffed out, and the two continued their affair in secret. When they were found out, Rotger was fired—but not before the super's wife allegedly swung her handbag into his groin so hard he suffered a contusion of the testicle. Naturally, their story is on the cover of the Daily News and the Post today.

For well over two years now, Bronx gym teacher and coach Dan Smith has been sidelined in one of the Department of Education's infamous "rubber rooms," thanks to an allegation of sexual misconduct in March 2007. But while other teachers (over 600 hundred of them!) use their rubber room time to play Sudoku and nap, Smith has been hatching a plan to get out.

George Adde, 66, claims he sustained a herniated disk in his lower back when other passengers fell on him during the 2003 Staten Island ferry crash, which killed 11 people and injured many others. Taxpayers have spent $66.9 million settling 161 of the 171 cases filed in the aftermath of the accident, including a $6.5 million payout to a man who lost part of his right leg. Adde was probably counting on a million or two to help him cope with his back pain, but there was just one teensy problem with his lawsuit.

Not to be outdone by that measly $1 billion class action lawsuit filed against Greenhouse—the "eco-friendly" but allegedly black-unfriendly downtown nightclub—some other offended blacks have stepped up with their own $1.5 billion lawsuit! Greenhouse: the "big tobacco" of nightclubs. This new lawsuit is being filed today by Raqiyah Mays, a Kiss FM radio host, and three others who say that they were not let in "due to their race." Isn't it about time for Latinos, Hasidim, and Sikhs to get their piece of the Greenhouse bonanza?

A Yankees fan from New Jersey is filing a $5 million class action suit over some seats from the old Yankee stadium he bought as a souvenir. John Lefkus spent the best 23 seasons of his life rooting for the Yankees from section M11, Row A, seats one and two, and after the Team moved to a new stadium, Lefkus decided to buy his old seats for $2,000. But what he actually purchased would shock him.

A high-profile midwife who was featured in a New York cover story and the documentary The Business of Being Born is being sued by a Manhattan couple who blame her for their baby's death. The midwife, Carla Muhlhahn, is one of the most well-known midwives, and it's not the first time she's been sued; in 2003, she settled a $950,000 lawsuit after a baby was partially paralyzed. In the current lawsuit, Catherine and Ricardo McKenzie accuse Muhlhahn of gross negligence and recklessness during the delivery, which lasted three days in their West 113th Street apartment.

A Manhattan teenager with no criminal record is suing the city for $1 million because cops arrested and taunted him as "Plaxico Burress" after he got shot in a robbery. Christian Dudley doesn't even own a gun, but that didn't matter to the officers who collared him after the Harlem mugging earlier this year. He was arrested in a Washington Heights hospital where he was waiting to get the bullet removed from the back of his knee—instead of surgery, he got dragged to the precinct on a charge of criminal possession of a weapon. And that's where the fun really started.

A sushi chef who tried to "hold" a parking space for his manager by standing in the street ended up with a broken foot and other injuries after an irate driver tried to claim the space. Ke Hai Du says it all started around 5 p.m. on October 9th, when he noticed the space become available in front of the Peck Slip restaurant Suteishi. He dashed outside to save the space while his manager got her car, but before she arrived driver Paul Todd pulled up with plans of his own.

The West Soho nightclub Greenhouse has a notoriously tough door policy, and is renowned for excluding throngs of hopefuls from the club's bi-level douchetivities inside. So it's no shocker that two black women interpreted their rejection by the club's door bitch as racist. Kashan Robinson and Maria Sicard are suing Greenhouse; they say they were two of about 100 people who were denied entry to a Teri Woods book party because of their race.

A Manhattan resident has filed a lawsuit against a New Jersey man who she says injured her while dancing at a wedding at the Hyatt Morristown in November 2008. Hedge fund worker Christine Mancision ended up at the Morristown Memorial Hospital after the reception went sideways; she tells the Post she was minding her own business on the dance floor when "all of a sudden, I turn and I'm grabbed by this really tall individual. I had no idea who he was. And he grabbed my arm and spun me around to dance with me and then just flung me off to the side of the dance floor, and I went flying to the floor. When I sat up, I was in a lot of pain. I looked at my arm, and it was bent the completely opposite way."

Finally, another spin class lawsuit! Attorney Clyde Eisman is suing Bally's Total Fitness to get a refund on his $1,500 membership fee; his lawsuit accuses the gym of letting a "small coterie of members" dominate the consistently overbooked spin classes.

Two women are suing the Wildlife Conservation Society because they spent five hours stranded on the Bronx Zoo's Skyfari one evening in July 2008. After a strong gust of wind knocked a cable car's wheel off track, stopping all cable car movement, some 37 zoo visitors were left with nothing to do but sit 100 feet above the ground (and lions and gazelles) alone with their thoughts—or, worse, other people. Robin Dean, 26, and her 27-year-old friend, Migdalia Arinegas, both teachers, have filed a lawsuit in Bronx Supreme Court seeking unspecified damages.

The widow of NYPD Lieutenant Michael Pigott, who killed himself a week after issuing a fatal command to Taser a mentally disturbed man, is suing the city. Her lawyers are arguing that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and NYPD spokesman Paul Browne contributed to his suicide by making him a scapegoat for the Sept. 24, 2008 incident, in which a naked bipolar man fell one story to his death after being Tasered. Court papers obtained by the Post argue that public comments made by the NYPD's top brass "caused Michael Pigott to become humiliated, distraught, depressed, and caused him to commit suicide."

The embattled community organizing group ACORN is filing a lawsuit today in Maryland District Court, accusing individuals behind an embarrassing series of hidden camera videos of violating state law by recording employees' conversations without permission. Similar to the videos recorded in ACORN's Brooklyn offices, the Maryland video shows workers giving inappropriate advice to two filmmakers (left) posing as prostitute and pimp seeking assistance in getting a house for a brothel. Alan Schwartz, general counsel for Acorn, accused the fake pimp, James O’Keefe, of "trying to destroy an organization whose principal purpose is to help poor people."

Lawyers for the recently-reopened Hawaiian Tropic Zone have failed to convince a judge that a discrimination lawsuit against the restaurant should be dismissed. Now it's up to a jury to decide whether management at the Times Square HTZ turned Melody Morales down for a job because her deportment was too ethnic. Morales filed the suit back in January after managers allegedly told her, "We will not hire you because you have a 'speech problem.' You have a Latin accent. You don't speak white. You are ghetto."

The New York State Health Department is now requiring mandatory seasonal and swine flu vaccinations for all hospital, home health and hospice workers. No other state or city agency in America has such a requirement, and a coalition of local health care workers unions are considering filing a lawsuit to block it. Less than half of all health care workers across America get an annual flu shot, and Dr. Julie Gerberding, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, thinks the New York requirement is "a big deal." She tells the Times it's time for "a more aggressive approach," not just for the protection of workers, but also for patients with weak immune systems.

A former employee at Coach's flagship Manhattan store is suing the company and his former boss, who he says subjected him to an endless litany of juvenile double entendres and sexual harassment. Oscar Bravo, a former stockroom clerk at the Madison Avenue store, also claims upper management ignored his repeated complaints about supervisor Brandon Williams. Bravo says the annoying behavior included come-ons from Williams to look at his "weiner" on days he brought his pet dachsund to work. "He would say, 'Ok, I have a big weiner, you wanna come see my weiner?'," Oscar Bravo tells the Daily News. "I would say, 'Get the hell out of here, nobody wants to see that.'"

Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village tenants suing property owner Tishman Speyer had another big day yesterday, when the state's highest court heard arguments in a trial that could set a costly precedent for landlords at rent-regulated buildings citywide. The tenants' lawyers said Tishman's conversion of rent-regulated apartments into market-rate units was illegal because the developer received tax abatement, something the state legislature forbids. But Tishman's lawyers argued that the law doesn't apply to them because the apartments became rent-stabilized 18 years before the developers got the tax breaks. A semantic debate about the word "become" ensued, with Judge Robert S. Smith finally asking, "You might say that I became a grandfather for the third time last month. Isn’t that normal English, even though I was already a grandfather?" (His point, seemingly, was that the law's use of the word "became" shouldn't be so strictly interpreted by Tishman.) But the bigger question yesterday hinged on what impact a verdict for the tenants would have—they're seeking some $200 million in damages from Tishman, whose lawyers warned that landlords could have to repay “tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars” to tenants who were overcharged, should the Appeals court uphold the lower court's ruling.

Nice going, commenters. We were all having fun with Sean McGinn's $5 million lawsuit against Match.com, but as usual you had to go and push things too far, and now he's dropping the suit. Because of you. You'll recall that in June McGinn had sued Match.com—despite actually finding romance through the dating site—for "creating the appearance that inactive members are active" and causing him "profound personal anguish." But according to a recent court filing, the "sensationalized media coverage subjected [McGinn] to hundreds of reader comments" on the Internets and "caused no end of personal distress for Sean and incited a firestorm of rancorous Web commentary that Sean found literally unbearable." According to his lawyer, some cruel wags even "mocked" the 37-year-old TV producer as "lovelorn." Others, like Gothamist commenter Rocknrope, noted that McGinn "actually does look like a human incarnation of Comic Book Guy with short hair and glasses." It's hurtful words like that that drove McGinn to give up on his $5 million dream. Happy? We all owe Sean an apology in the comments.

As promised, a coalition of Brooklyn community groups filed a lawsuit against the city yesterday over plans to turn a 31-acre area zoned for manufacturing on the border of Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy into 1,895 low-rise apartments—905 of which would charge below-market rate rents. Opponents say the housing complex would be racially and religiously discriminatory because it features too many three- and four-bedroom apartments, which would "disproportionately accommodate the Hasidic community's large families." Critics also want the buildings to be much taller, and accuse the Buildings Department of capping them at eight stories to accommodate Orthodox Jews who can't ride elevators on Shabbos. A lawyer for the Broadway Triangle Community Coalition tells the Daily News, "This process was dramatically racial. It acquiesces to the needs of the Hasidic community." But Councilman David Yassky, a supporter of the development plan, dismisses the allegations, explaining, "I want more housing, but I don't want skyscrapers in the middle of Brooklyn." The City Council will vote on the plan after the City Planning Commission casts their vote, and like other big projects, the use of eminent domain is becoming another heated issue.

The parents of a 10-year-old Bronx boy who was killed by an allegedly speeding van while riding his bike are suing the city for $10 million for failing to install a speed bump. 10-year-old Michael Needham was riding his bike with friends outside the Allerton Library after school on June 5th, 2008 when the van struck him; he died after 19 days in a coma. The suit, filed Tuesday in Bronx Supreme Court, argues that the city should have known that drivers near the Allerton Library "regularly exceeded the speed limit, failed to obey stop signs, raced to make traffic lights and otherwise operated their vehicles in dangerous and unlawful manners."

"It's like being raped," 50-year-old Kevin Uhrin tells the Daily News, describing how he felt seeing a piece of paper on his apartment door with the word "fags" written on it. Uhrin says the paper, which was taped up to announce some impending repair work and insult him, was part of an ongoing anti-gay campaign by board members at his Kew Gardens Co-Op. He also heard his floor referred to as the "AIDS floor," because three units on the floor were each owned by a gay couple. So Uhrin and another tenant, Estelle Torino, filed a discrimination lawsuit; Uhrin settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, but Torino's case will go to court next month. She says the trouble started when a busted pipe caused a leak in her apartment, and management refused to repair the damage. Tensions escalated, and in the years since, the board has allegedly turned other hetero tenants against their homosexual neighbors. Now Torino is scared to go downstairs to do her laundry alone, but shouldn't she be more worried about finding an offensive note on her door?

Rats are still keeping it real in the Bronx, where a two-year-old girl was taken to the hospital with five rodent bites after her mother heard her screaming in her crib. Jonnique McKinney tells the Daily News, "She was sleeping in her bed and she woke up screaming." Exterminators had plugged up the radiator with steel wool in her Clay Avenue apartment, but nothing can stop a hungry rat with an appetite for human babies. While hitting the Google machine for this story, we learned about a horrific incident that happened last month in Louisiana, where an infant girl was found dead in her crib after rats ate away at her face and limbs, then left bloody rodent footprints all over her sheets. Anyway! McKinney filed a lawsuit against her building owner last year, when her daughter was bitten, but it's only come to light now because the landlord sued the exterminator this week. Still, aren't you glad you finally know about all this? Sweet dreams!

The family of a man who died in his sleep was so horrified by the condition of his corpse that they're suing a Bronx funeral home. The deceased, Fernando Maldonado, had various maladies at the time of his death, so an autopsy was performed to determine the exact cause. But when the wake was held at La Paz Funeral Home on June 1st, some 75 mourners were appalled to find his bluish body in a deplorable state, with a hole behind his right ear seeping blood, stains on the pillow, and wires that appeared to be autopsy sutures holding a loose flap of skin to the back of his hairline. The wake was interrupted three times as the funeral director tried to address complaints about the body's appearance, and one of the owners of La Paz blamed the corpse's condition on the medical examiner, telling CBS2, "We did the best we could." But a lawyer for Madonado's family says that if their loved one couldn't be made presentable, they should have been given the option of a closed casket. Madonado's brother says, "Everybody was shocked. Everybody kept asking 'was he killed? Was he hit in the head?'"

Last month Staten Island EMT Frank Musarella, 46, a retired NYPD detective, was arrested for posting on his Facebook page a crime scene photo of a murder victim taken with his cell phone. If convicted of official misconduct, he could face up to a year in jail. But victim Caroline Wimmer's parents, who found their daughter's strangled and beaten body in March after not hearing from her for a few days, are filing a notice of claim in state Supreme Court to hold the city, the NYPD, the FDNY and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta accountable.

Three New Jersey residents are filing a class action lawsuit to force the makers of Nathan's, Oscar Mayer, Ball Park, Hebrew National and Sabrett franks to put warning labels on their hot dog packaging—not "WARNING: Hot dogs are revolting flesh tubes packed with lips and assholes," but "WARNING: Hot dogs increase the risk of cancer." A lawyer for the plaintiffs tells the Star-Ledger, "We view this just like the tobacco litigation. There is now a scientific consensus that processed meats are a significant cause of colorectal and other forms of cancer."

Yesterday, a construction safety coordinator filed a $20 million lawsuit, accusing her employer of ignoring reports of sexual harassment while working at a Park Avenue JPMorgan Chase building site. Bianca Wisniewski, a 43-year-old widowed mother of two, says she repeatedly fended off lewd advances from elevator operator Steve Greco in 2007. According to the suit, Greco's overtures included grabbing her around the waist and cooing, "I just want to take you to dinner, no fu*king," and "Everybody kisses engineer Steve. This is a man's world, not a place for women to work." The suit accuses LIC's Total Safety Consulting of ignoring her complaints, offering her job back but then rescinding the offer and replacing her with a man. Her lawyer says, "What I find atrocious is that here's a woman who was working in a job where we have... crane accidents and people dying, and she was in a position of authority to ensure safety. But when she reports a guy vilely hitting on her, instead of protecting her safety, they protect a scoundrel." None of the defendants in the lawsuit—JPMorgan Chase, Total Safety, Greco, and his union—have formally commented, but Greco told a Daily News reporter yesterday, "I don't know [Wisniewski]. I don't know what you're talking about."

Cheyenne Jeudy's parents had been meticulously planning her $50,000 sweet sixteen birthday party for two years, but what they didn't plan for was the appearance of a group of drunken, unruly party crashers from a wedding reception held in another part of the catering hall. According to a lawsuit filed by Cheyenne's mother Denise, a NYC cop, the party turned ugly because Russo's on the Bay, a Howard Beach catering hall, didn't stop the party crashers from molesting young girls at the Sweet 16, nor from beating up her nephew outside.

A transsexual who spent two months working as a mail clerk for the Parks Department in Central Park says she was fired after she complained about her co-workers' cruel insults. Chanel Birden, who was born Andrew Birden and is on female hormones, also says her boss tried to bar her from the ladies' room and refused to call her Chanel. And when she used the ladies room anyway, workers called her nasty names and gasped, "What in the world is that?" So, unsurprisingly, Birden's suing the city for gender discrimination. She tells the Daily News, "There is no mistaking me when you see me—this is definitely a girl. It's not like you're looking at a messy man with a wig on. And I'm a gorgeous woman at that. I would always go to work looking very glamorous." Clearly the other mail clerk ladies in the powder room were just jealous. Birden's lawyer Derek Smith says that while his client has not yet had "a sex-change operation but she is, in fact, a woman... The genital appendage alone does not make her a man."

The owner of a popular Thai restaurant in the Financial District underpaid employees by hundreds of thousands of dollars during the past six years, with some working 72 hours a week for less than minimum wage, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The A.G. says Lemongrass Grill owner Hann Low paid delivery workers as little as $2.08 per hour, and some kitchen workers made as little as $4.23 per hour (below minimum wage). Delivery workers say they were compensated just $25 a day for 10 to 12 hour shifts at Low's restaurant at 84 William Street; Cuomo's suit demands $962,000 in restitution and damages. An investigation is continuing into Low's second Lemongrass location on the Upper West Side—Low’s ex-wife owns the third Lemongrass Grill in Park Slope, and it's unclear whether that location is also under investigation. Cuomo's lawsuit is just the latest in an ongoing crackdown on restaurateurs underpaying workers; in March state labor officials recovered $2.3 million in back wages for more than 800 workers at nine restaurants, including the Ollie's noodle shop mini-chain, and the 21 Club is being sued by employees for withholding part of their tips.