Results tagged “lawsuit”

One day in September 2008, Queens High School student Stephen Cruz suffered a lacerated forehead when school safety agent Daniel O’Connell, without provocation, allegedly kicked open a restroom stall that Stephen was using. Cruz claims that after he tumbled to the floor bleeding from his head, O'Connell (whom the students called RoboCop) walked away saying, "That's life; it will stop bleeding." Typical robot.

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.

It's been just over two years since Linda Stein was murdered in her apartment on the Upper East Side. Her assistant Natavia Lowery was charged with the crime and has been in custody since—and now Stein's two daughters are suing Prudential Douglas Elliman brokerage for hiring her in the first place.

Before Cablevision visited her Riverdale home, 79-year-old Elizabeth Bernd says she was active for her age. But when the cable guy arrived, the Daily News reports, he allegedly "unfastened preexisting wiring that had been fastened together underneath (her) computer desk/station," she tripped over the wires left loose, broke her leg, had a stroke and now is living in a nursing home. Bernd is suing for $5 million, accusing the cable company of negligence noting that she cannot "even talk or eat without great difficulty."

The High Line only just opened to the public this past June, but already it's facing a $2 million lawsuit. We've been told by the NYC Park Advocates that "a basic design flaw that regularly causes pedestrians to trip has rendered the vast majority of the first section of the million High Line promenade a hazard."

Hooters has added insult to injury. If it isn’t painful enough to wear those tight, little, crotch-riding orange shorts, waitresses at the restaurant chain also have to dip into their paychecks to pay for the uniforms - which is illegal.

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.

Yesterday one ebullient Stuyvesant Town tenant said he expected his market-rate apartment to revert back to rent-regulated rent levels "immediately," now that the state's highest court has ruled that property owner Tishman Speyer improperly raised rents while also receiving tax breaks from the city. But tenants are almost definitely in store for more legal foot-dragging from Tishman Speyer, which could be liable for some $200 million in damages. After fighting off the tenants' lawsuit for years, Tishman Speyer isn't just going to roll over, especially since the company is at high risk of default on some $4.4 billion in loans. Every million counts!

Yesterday, a judge threw out a lawsuit against a Midtown restaurant over a 2006 "Shake It Like Shakira" contest. Back then, Megan Zacher, competing at Calico Jack's Cantina, was dancing on the bar but fell and, according to court documents, "shredded ligaments" in her knee. Ouch!

The daughter of a 44-year-old construction-safety inspector who was killed in a suspicious Flushing apartment fire earlier this week is vowing to continue her mother’s fight in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed months before her death.

Sparks Steak House in midtown has settled a class-action lawsuit filed by waiters who accused owners of skimming money from the tip pool and using it to pay other workers, including bartenders, the pastry chef, the wine-cellar master and banquet manager. The waiters sought $5 million, but settled for $3.15 million, and more than 40 waiters should receive over $20,000 each from Sparks, the fifth-highest-grossing restaurant in the city. "What're you going to do," Sparks' owner Michael Cetta asks the Post.

[UPDATE BELOW] Rumors are swirling about a stabbing at the downtown nightclub Greenhouse, and according to one employee, the club was shut down last night. The closure comes as Greenhouse owners fend off allegations that the club denied entry to approximately 100 people because they are black. Two people have filed a $1 billion class action lawsuit against the ostensibly "eco-friendly" nightclub, accusing the bouncer of barring them from author Teri Woods's book party in August. When Woods arrived at the club she found her invited guests waiting outside. Here's cell phone video of her reaction:

The New York State Department of Health is getting a taste of its own ultimatum medicine. With only 23% of the swine flu doses originally expected to arrive by the end of October reaching New York, the State Health Department has to choose: Uphold a regulation that all healthcare workers receive the shot (which was temporarily blocked by a State Supreme Court judge last week) or make sure those most at risk receive the shot.

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.

In a decision that could have major repercussions for landlords of rent-controlled buildings citywide, the state’s highest court has ruled this morning that owners of the sprawling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complexes in Manhattan improperly charged market-rate rents on thousands of apartments. In what is probably the final deathblow for Tishman Speyer's ownership of Stuy Town, the Court of Appeals ruled that the owners should not have raised rents beyond certain set levels while also receiving tax breaks from the city for major renovations.

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.

Finally deciding a lawsuit first filed in 2003, a federal jury has found Exxon Mobil liable for $104.7 million in compensatory damages for contaminating groundwater in NYC. The city had originally sought $250 million to cover construction of a treatment plant to purify the water in five wells in southeastern Queens. (The well water is used when the upstate reservoirs system is out of service during repairs, droughts and other emergencies.) The jury found Exxon Mobil guilty of failing to warn government agencies when it decided to add M.T.B.E. to gasoline. So what is M.T.B.E.?

The author whose book release party at Varick Street nightclub Greenhouse was allegedly ruined by a racist door policy may file a lawsuit of her own. The "eco-friendly" club was recently hit with a $1 billion class action lawsuit, accusing the bouncer and owner of denying entry to approximately 100 people because of their ethnicity. Now author Teri Woods has come forward corroborate the allegations, and she says it wasn't just blacks who were kept out of her party.

Somehow we don't think a broom handle to the ceiling is going to fix this one. One of Madonna's Upper West Side neighbors filed a lawsuit yesterday, charging her of subjecting the building to "pounding noise and vibration" when she uses her apartment as a dance studio.

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.

Six New York construction companies illegally paid white workers more than minorities who had the same jobs, a state lawsuit alleges. White workers earned an average of $25 per hour, while blacks netted $18 per hour and Latinos took home only $15 per hour, according to the suit filed by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Since 2002, pay discrepancies at at least ten different construction sites scammed minorities out of $4 million in wages and overtime.

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.

What one way a suspected drug gang member can muster up some cash legally? By suing the city! An alleged Brooklyn drug crew has apparently raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars by filing civil rights lawsuits against the city—all because the city rather settle the suits than go to court. A NYC Law Department spokeswoman told the Daily News, "Although we are often successful at trial, it can be more expensive to defend a case than to settle it."

Would a Tavern on the Green by any other name fare just as well in Central Park? The NY Times digs into the latest debate over the restaurant's name, which is reportedly appraised at $19 million.

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 trustee in charge of liquidating Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's assets, filed a lawsuit against Madoff's two sons, brother and his brother's daughter for $199 million in ill-gotten gains from the multi-billion dollar fraud. Irving Picard said the relatives used money from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities like a "a family piggy bank."

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."