Taxi fleet owners filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday to stop a fuel-efficiency mandate from going into effect October 1st, the date when all new taxis will need to be hybrid vehicles. Fleet owners' lawyers argue that only the federal government can set rules on fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. Plus they contend that hybrid cars like the Ford Escape cannot be safely adapted into taxis because they're smaller with limited legroom for passengers,......

Lawyers for Jerry Seinfeld insist the comic was just joking when he described "Sneaky Chef" author Missy Chase Lapine as a "wacko" for accusing his wife of plagiarism. Lapine is currently suing for trademark infringement because she says Jessica Seinfeld’s hit book about sneaking healthy food into kids’ snacks, called "Deceptively Simple," contains too many similarities to "Sneaky Chef" – and it was published by HarperCollins, who twice rejected Lapine’s pitch. While appearing on Letterman’s......

John Gotti Jr. interrupted his lawyer and spoke with reporters after appearing at Federal Court in White Plains yesterday. Gotti, reacting to a 2006 story in the NY Post which claimed he was becoming a government informant, became angry and said that his family was scared of a possible mob hit:My family lives in fear as a result of this. What happens next? Tell me, what happens next? Does it make it all better if......

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn fired Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff Viola Plummer yesterday. Quinn had required Plummer to sign a letter agreeing to behave during meetings, after Plummer heckled Quinn during a meeting about street namings and made reference to an "assassination" of Councilman Leroy Comrie, but Plummer refused (she has maintained that she meant a "assassination" of Comrie's character and/or political prospects). And Plummer filed a $1 million racial discrimination suit against......

A note to anyone writing under a pseudonym: Don't let the pseudonym become larger than life. After deliberating for a couple hours, a jury came to a verdict in a film production company's lawsuit against Laura Albert, who wrote novels under the name JT Leroy. A tipster at the Federal Court just gave us the scoop:Jury verdict in: Laura Albert and Underdogs Inc. are both liable for fraud and for breach of contract. Damages: $110,000......

There's a new group of servers accusing a restaurant of paying sub-minimum wages - former employees of the two upscale Mr. Chow locations. One of the servers also accuses restaurateur Michael Chow of kicking him in the stomach! The three filed a lawsuit yesterday in Manhattan Federal Court. Costin Dumitrescu, who had worked at Mr. Chow for 11 years, says that when he arrived to a meeting late, he was forced to lie down on......

Perfect for a Saturday in NY: A lovely, married head doctor accused of having sex with a prisoner! Psychologist Madgalena Sanchez was arraigned at Brooklyn Federal Court yesterday for having sex with an inmate under her care - and lying to the Department of Justice about it! The 35-year-old, who is married to a Lehman Brother equities trader and lives at Trump Place, was charged with "with sexual abuse of a ward who was “under......

-- Oh how we love those crazy hipsters and their artfully messy clothes! -- Eleven Egyptian students disappeared at JFK a couple of weeks ago, setting off a nationwide manhunt. They're probably just hanging out at the food-court hitting on stewardesses! -- AO Scott says Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is filled with "visual grandeur, sweeping emotion and heightened, sometimes overwrought, drama." -- Speaking of September 11th, WTC responders who missed the deadline are......

Federal, city, and local NJ authorities are facing a big "d'oh!" on their faces after mistakenly putting a Chinese-American woman in Rikers for 8 days last year. Because now the woman, Hui Ping Wang, who was arrested at JFK Airport when she was returning from a trip to China, is suing many law enforcement agencies, incuding the Department of Immigration, the city's Department of Correction, and Bergen County NJ's sheriff's office. Why all the fuss?......

If you've ever been interested in the mafia, either the real live mob or the movie kind, Gothamist highly recommends that you follow the trial of former NYPD detectives Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, who are accused of racketeering (and being involved in eight murders), which is going on in Brooklyn Federal Court right now. The lead witness for the prosecution was a 72 year old convicted pot dealer, another witness said one of the......

An interesting lawsuit in our multicultural city: A judge is deciding whether or not some Sephora employees were discriminated against for speaking Spanish on the job. While Federal Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled that the cosmetics retailer could restrict its employees to speaking only English while on the job, she will examine whether or not the women "faced retaliation" from management, as one woman was fired. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission tells the Daily......

After the city has decided to revoke the permit for the launch party of his new graffiti video game, designer Marc Ecko is doing the next best thing: Suing the city. And the NYCLU is getting involved, joining Ecko in a press conference yesterday asking the mayor to reinstate the permit. Animal Magazine publisher and graffiti enthusiast Bucky Turco was at the press conference gave us his report, with including Ecko's invitation for the......

The two former NYPD detectives accused of being hitmen for the mafia were released yesterday on bail. Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa were released on $5 million bail each after months on jail; a Federal Court judge granted bail, saying the prosecution's case was "weak." The two man have repeatedly expressed their innocence. Eppolito showed off his house arrest ankle bracelet, making Gothamist wonder if mandals are standard 57 year-old man foot wear. He......

It's a win for the Mayor, Commissioner Kelly, and the Central Park Conservancy: A judge agrees with the city and bars two protest groups from gathering in Central Park for a pre-Republican Convention protest. Two reasons stated: Groups had waited too long to file suit and security concerns. Manhattan Federal Court Judge William H. Pauley suggested other parks to protest in, like Van Cortlandt in the Bronx and Flushing-Corona in Queens, with Judge Pauley calling......