Results tagged “lawsuit”

The 33-year-old who suffered brain and spinal injuries this summer when he was struck by a falling tree limb in Central Park is suing the city and the Central Park Conservancy for negligence.

Before she left West Village restaurant Centro Vinoteca to embrace her new life as a Food Network star, Anne Burrell spent her days toiling in the kitchen, making killer meatball sandwiches, pasta, and offensive insults about the female front-of-house staff, a lawsuit alleges. The suit, filed in March, accuses Burrell of repeatedly harassing employees with offensive slurs, and claims that after they complained to the restaurant's owners, they were terminated. A bartender says Burrell called her a "ho" and told her she had "saggy boobs," while others were constantly called whores by Burrell, who once allegedly told a waitress, "You must be tired today from f--king all night."

After agreeing to settle an explosive $600 million lawsuit filed by five female former employees, Hawaiian Tropic Zone has backed away from a deal to settle out of court for $2 million. It's a surprising move for HTZ, which is famous for its bikini-clad servers; having reopened its midtown location in May, you might think the Riese Organization, HTZ's parent company, would just want this to go away. Each of the women have accused upper management of looking the other way as the former general manager at the midtown location turned the establishment into a "sexual playground" for "boyhood fantasies."

Busta Rhymes has been busted for many things, and often gets of scott free. But not today! The NY Post reports that a Brooklyn judge ordered the rapper to pay $75,000 to a fan, Alex Duncan, that he assaulted at a 2003 concert. Allegedly Duncan wasn't a fan of the rapper at all, but was there to see Fabolous, who canceled. Allegedly when he stood up at the show and Rhymes took notice, Duncan told him he wasn't there to see him, and yadda yadda yadda Busta doused him with water, pelted with water bottles, and had his bodyguard punch him.

Five female employees at Battery Park Swim and Fitness say they were fired after complaining to human resources about a manager who ran the place like his own personal frat house. A lawsuit filed by two of the former employees, membership consultant Courtney McCallion and trainer/receptionist Maggie Alexander, contends that manager David Anglin was usually about as mature as Rodney Dangerfield on his fifth martini during their employ at the gym, and his harassment included such timeless flirtation gambits as bra-strap snapping and jokes about their cleavage.

Last year Chris Muth saved a 7-year-old cat that was trapped in a narrow shaft in a Carroll Gardens apartment building, only to be sent to a mental institution where they said he had a “bizarre delusion [that he] was trying to ‘save’ a cat of his friend." Sure, maybe he shouldn't have ripped apart other people's apartments to save the feline, but the cat did in fact exist, and he did save it.

A Brooklyn federal judge declared that NYPD officers regularly fabricate criminal charges and lie under oath — and the city condones it. Judge Jack Weinstein said "there is some evidence of an attitude among officers that is sufficiently widespread to constitute a custom or policy by the city approving illegal conduct."

On the same day in November that former New York Post editor Sandra Guzman filed a lawsuit accusing the tabloid of ignoring racist and sexual harassment, the paper fired a black reporter named Austin Fenner, who had worked at the city desk. Now Fenner's filed his own lawsuit (using Guzman's lawyer) alleging that he was subject to unfair employment practices, unlawful retaliation, and accusing editors of racially-motivated news coverage. Fenner claims he was "routinely humiliated," "openly cursed at" and subjected to "Jim Crow"-style segregation.

Lawyers for a Manhattan strip club say the 22-year-old beauty pageant queen whose photo they appropriated to advertise the club is just suing them to get attention. You may recall that back in April, former Miss Oklahoma Laci Kay Scott filed a lawsuit against Ten's Gentlemen's Club after she discovered that the club had been distributing cards on the street with her image—and without her knowledge. Scott, who's been trying to get her modeling career off the ground with gigs posing in prom dress ads, says being mistakenly perceived as a stripper could disqualify her from the pagaent circuit and damage her career. But Ten's owners think this lawsuit has been just great for her.

After being hit hard with a cancellation of their series, the producers of "The Unusuals" are now on the receiving end of a lawsuit from actor Charles Buckley. The New Yorker filed a notice at the Queens Supreme Court after being injured during filming, where he was body slammed repeatedly on the concrete.

A cop shot in the line of duty last year is suing the NYPD for outfitting him with a bulletproof vest and a holster that he claims weren't up to snuff. Officer Shane Farina, 39, was wearing a department-issued vest when he was shot point blank by a suspected fare-beater who grabbed his partner's gun in a Queens subway station last year

A legal secretary is suing a midtown law firm for allegedly cutting her loose just hours after she revealed that she had a cancerous tumor. In October 2007, Theodora Benedict sent an e-mail informing her employers at Tarnow & Juvelier that doctors had diagnosed her with a rare tumor behind her sinuses, and she would have to miss a week for surgery and a week for recovery. But instead of "get well soon" cards, Benedict, 61, says she got the boot—two hours after clicking send.

Exhortations to "Close the deal you c---" and "Stop being a f---ing p----y" are allegedly commonplace at GDS International, which is being sued by a 26-year-old Egyptian-American female employee for an unspecified sum. Lobna Abdelrehim is alleging "discrimination" based on gender and religion, as well as "retaliation" for opposing discrimination in the workplace—her lawyer Jack Tuckner tells the Post that GDS's publishing sales culture is "an extreme sort of jock fraternity ethos that's really unfathomable in this day and age. The bosses are all aware of it, and they could care less. It's like a throwback into the 1950s."

It was a year ago that 50 Cent filed a lawsuit against Taco Bell for using his name without permission. The company's president, Greg Creed, had asked the rapper in an open letter to press outlets "to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent for a day, and noted if he rapped his order at a drive-thru it would result in $10,000 being given to his favorite charity." Not informed of this, 50 Cent didn't hear about it until he was being called a sell-out.

The hand and foot model suing her UES co-op for $10 million for allegedly ostracizing her because she married a former doorman has been all too happy to tell her story to the tabloids this week—until yesterday, when she suddenly fled the building with a coat over her head. But since Christina Ambers is a famous hand model, the local tabloid photographers immediately recognized her distinctive digits, and some truly hilarious images ensued. "You ruined our lives!" husband Angel Rotger shouted at the shutterbugs as he led his hooded wife along the sidewalk.

Those curbside tables manned by people soliciting donations for the United Homeless Organization are nothing more than a scam that funnels money to the bosses at the top, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. You'll recall that UHO founder Steven Riley was deliciously skewered in a classic Fox 5 "Shame" segment last month; now Riley and UHO director Myra Walker are in Cuomo's crosshairs, accused of co-opting "a tax-exempt, charitable corporate structure for their own benefit"—benefits such as paying Riley's bills for cable and Weight Watchers!

A 67-year old Bronx man is suing NYC and the Montefiore Medical Center for throwing out his severed ear, the Daily News reports. A chunk of Eduardo Garcia's ear was bitten off by his son's bull terrier on May 10 last year. Emergency workers put the ear on ice in the ambulance, but when they got to Montefiore, EMS workers "threw the hunk of flesh in the trash" because of the risk of infection if it were reattached.

     

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.

It is not a good week for businesses ending in "&H" — first the H&H Bagel owner was indicted on tax fraud, and now word is getting out that the Hasidic-run B&H Photo Video is being sued to the tune of $8 million in a gender bias discrimination lawsuit. According to the NY Times, the two unrelated cases were announced just 30 minutes apart yesterday.

A bride is suing a wedding photographer for allegedly taking semi-nude pictures of her on her wedding day and posting them on the internet — despite her objections. Bride Sara Bostwick filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court against photographer Carolyn Monastra and the Christian Oth Studio for causing her to "suffer severe emotional injuries, including post-traumatic stress disorder," the Post reports.

According to The Real Deal, Judge Charles Ramos told lawyers for Corcoran to "read the riot act" to their client, finding the company "grossly negligent" for failing to preserve and turn over e-mails revealing that Corcoran agents canceled appointments with prospective buyers on rainy days. Apparently, the flooding in the three-bedroom Park Slope duplex was so bad that it was like "the side of a swimming pool has come down," Einstein tells the Daily News. Well, it doesn't take a genius to see that Corcoran's in a bit of hot water here.

Take 100 middle school students, dozens of soccer balls, and one confined space and what do you get? A lawsuit! The staff at Intermediate School 219 in the Bronx used that dangerous recipe to pass by a rainy day last year. One dodgeball expert told the Daily News, "The force of those balls going across the gymnasium, especially thrown by middle school students, could be quite strong."

A Manhattan Federal Court judge did double duty as the fashion police yesterday, when he ordered a groovy balloon artist who's suing police to go change out of his tie-dyed T-shirt, tie-dyed patchwork overalls, and far-out multicolored sneakers. Russian immigrant Alexander "Sasha" Alhovsky, 40, was in the court room during jury selection for the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages over claims that the NYPD used excessive force when he was taken into custody in June 2006, on suspicion of planting a fake bomb inside an UES Starbucks three days earlier.

One 12-year-old was recently the victim of some kite fighting leftovers. The "sport," made famous in The Kite Runner, is popular in Flushing Meadows Corona Park — and now the city is on the receiving end of a lawsuit over it.

A doctor based in Greenwich, Connecticut lost his New York medical license after admitting to using the wrong sperm to impregnate a woman who subsequently gave birth to twins. But Ben Ramaley is still permitted to practice gynecology and obstetrics in Connecticut, though perhaps not for much longer. After agreeing to pay a $10,000 fine to the couple and refrain from performing artificial inseminations, the case was sealed. But now Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal caught wind of it, and he's considering prosecuting Dr. Ramaley.

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.

This is why we can't have nice things, or dogs in bars: An elderly Queens man says his sex life was ruined (and so was his knee) after he tripped over an "unleashed and unrestrained" dog in a Kew Gardens pub in April. Irving Grossman, 81, is suing Austin's Steak and Ale House, which is popular with gamblers because it has its own Off-Track Betting window. That's exactly where Grossman was headed on that fateful spring day when his luck took a turn for the worse.

The NY Post editor who was fired after complaining about a controversial political cartoon depicting the author of Obama's stimulus package as a dead chimpanzee has filed a major lawsuit against the tabloid, News Corp, and Post editor in chief Col Allan. It's a doozy! In the 38 page complaint, Sandra Guzman accuses her former employer of ignoring racist and sexual harassment, and depicts the Post newsroom as a male-dominated frat house run by the crude, misogynistic Allan. Hardly surprising, but her accusations are juicy nonetheless:

A police horse named Mr. Biggs is at the center of a lawsuit filed against the city last week. Allegedly the member of the NYPD's Mounted Unit took a bite out of a New Jersey woman last summer, and now that woman is suing.

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.