You might think flying business class is always about being fanned with palm leaves while flipping through books on golf, but sometimes there are real hardships going on behind that curtain, as Lynne Meadow, who makes $395,824 a year as artistic director of the non-profit Manhattan Theatre Club, discovered last August on a flight from Rome to New York on Continental Airlines. The Sun has it that Meadow (pictured) is now suing the airline after......

Restaurant workers seem increasingly ready to hit their employers with lawsuits over tips – Buddha Bar and Tao are two of the latest to have their Zen calm shattered. But owners are also fighting back even after they lose, as three waiters at the Old Homestead Steakhouse are finding out. After winning $36,000 in a lawsuit over ripped-off tips, they’re suing their bosses again for harassment. The main gripe is that they’ve been punished by......

Photoby Raymond Haddad at flickr Figuring that the best legal defense is to be offensive, ConEd is suing NYC for the 2007 midtown Manhattan steam pipe explosion that killed one woman and horribly burned two other people. Dozens more were injured in the blast that made 41st and Lexington Ave. look like an erupting volcano, as a plume of steam shot high into the air. ConEd is on the receiving end of dozens of......

For quite some time now, a group of East Village residents have been pressuring the local Community Board to snuff out Death & Co., the dark and sophisticated bar on East Sixth street, just down the block from that old timer who sells and repairs bicycles. Like other turbo-gentrifying neighborhoods, the local scolds are fed up with the all the noisy drunkards staggering around their neighborhood at all hours, and they’ve focused their energy on......

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......

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 7-year-old New York City boy has joined a growing number of children who’ve had the horrifying experience of getting their feet mangled by escalators while wearing popular plastic clogs made by Crocs. The boy’s mother says the accident happened in a Kentucky airport: ”All of a sudden I hear this excruciating screaming from Nicky and I turn around and his little foot is being sucked into the side of the escalator. It's just like......