Andrew Giuliani, the son of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, has filed a federal lawsuit against Duke University after being kicked off the golf team for various minor infractions. The lawsuit asserts that the coach said Giuliani tossed an apple at a teammate, hitting the side of his face, and that in a football game with members of the golf team he “played harder than some of the other boys wanted to play.”
It is unclear if his disruption and bratty behavior during his father’s inauguration as mayor of New York in 1994, when he was a chubby-cheeked seven-year-old, were cited as a possible reasons for his dismissal. Also included in the lawsuit is an e-mail to Giuliani from five teammates saying they no longer wanted him on the team.
In other words, ol’ Andrew’s still a brat. What’s also clear is, he’s not a very good golfer. According to reports, he’s the twelfth best player on Duke’s thirteen-person team. The team’s “spiritualist” summed up the situation as follows: If you’re talented, and you act like an asshole, you’re considered “complicated.” If you’re not talented, you’re just an asshole. [Newsday]
A jury has awarded a Georgia woman $150,000 after she sued her former fiance for canceling their wedding. The jilted bride, RoseMary Shell, argued that her fiance’s “promise of marital bliss amounted to a binding contract,” adding that she left a high-paying job in Florida to be with him and has “suffered financial losses since their break-up.”
The fiance, Wayne Gibbs, explained that he had already laid out $30,000 to pay off certain of Shell’s debts when they were engaged, and when he found out she had even more debt, he did what any loving life-partner-to-be would do and left her a note in their bathroom telling her the wedding was off. “People shouldn’t be allowed to do that,” Shell explained, adding, “hopefully he’ll think twice before he does it to someone else.”
Legal analysts have agreed that Shell had every reason to be upset by Gibbs’s actions, but have advised her to keep in mind as she gets back on that dating horse that, from a legal perspective at least, a promise of “marital bliss” from the kind of guy who would break up with you by leaving a note in your toilet may not be the strongest form of consideration in future romantic contracts. | WSB-TV
The aspiring model girlfriend of a rags-to-riches Park Avenue doorman who once worked as a “greeter” at a Manhattan club busted last week for being a brothel is now insisting to the media that she never, ever knew the club was actually selling sex. The name of this club that citizens coast-to-coast were shocked to learn was carrying on a little prostitution behind closed doors? Big Daddy Lou’s Hot Lap Dance Club on West 38th Street.
The former greeter, Sabina Mari Johansson, who worked at the club just weeks before it was raided, claims she “had no idea what was going on behind the scenes,” and only “learned about it when it hit the papers.” She reiterates that her job duties were limited to “greeting customers and helping dancers,” but did not—repeat, not—involve anything that could be construed as shady or hooker-ish. “I do fashion,” she clarified. “I do fitness. I do bikinis. I don’t do nude.”
Johansson’s reps have not commented on what, if any, new employment the fashion-fitness expert has secured since leaving Big Daddy Lou’s, but they have confirmed that she did recently turn down a receptionist position at Nasty Sam’s All-Nude Hooker Shack on 12th Ave, suspecting that the business was not, in fact, the high-fashion fitness spa that it claimed to be in its ad on Craigslist. [NY Post]
What happens when a 25-year-old party girl tries to enforce a written promise that her cokehead boyfriend likely scribbled on a napkin in a the middle of a bender, agreeing to give her a million bucks if he started using drugs again? Just ask Noelle Reno, ex-girlfriend of banking heir and “notorious drug user” Matthew Mellon, who is taking the 43-year-old bad boy to court to try to enforce the contract she had him sign obligating him to give her a “cash payment of $1 million” if he “ingested cocaine or other similar drugs within the next six months and it rendered him unable to interact normally with other people for more than two days.”
Mellon’s legal experts have refused to comment on the merits of the pending claim, but they did want to reiterate their strong belief that the kid from Mellon’s fourth grade class—the one who made that half-court shot after betting Mellon a billion dollars he could make it—would very likely prove unsuccessful should he also attempt to collect his unpaid debt. [Daily Mail]
Photo by Bryan Chan
Media everywhere are reporting that Christian Bale, recently accused by his sister and his 61-year-old mom, a former circus clown, of roughing them up in a London hotel on the eve of the “Dark Knight“‘s European premiere, is now officially denying the accusations.
Legal commentators worldwide understand why Bale would issue a fervent denial of the charges, but they have delicately pointed out that, typically, mothers don’t lie to police about getting beat up by one of their kids. Especially when the mother is in town to support the kid’s big movie premiere. And is 61 years old. And is a clown.
That said, pundits have noted that Bale may just be following the lead of the so-British-it-hurts Bobbies running the case, who “delayed questioning Bale for a day to avoid disrupting the opening of the box-office blockbuster,” according to police sources. “It would have been wrong to wreck the premiere over a complaint which we do not yet know is founded in truth,” the source said. Really? Isn’t that sort of one of the principal tenets of police work—to investigate complaints to figure out if they’re founded in truth? Before someone gets, you know, killed? Regardless of whether or not the alleged perpetrator happens to be playing the new Batman?
Sources close to the case have noted, however, one small silver lining for Bale in all this: The Heath-Ledger-is-getting-more-publicity-for-this-movie-than-I-am problem is no longer on the table. [NY Post]
Lesbians worldwide can breathe easy once again: In a shocking turn of international jurisprudence, a court in Greece has dismissed a request by residents of the Greek island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word “lesbian” to describe ladies who love ladies.
The not-quite-class-action suit was brought by three residents of Lesbos, the birthplace of the poetess Sappho, whose poems inspired the term “lesbian.” Despite the plaintiffs’ argument that using the highly controversial term to describe homosexual women “insulted [the residents’] identity,” the court disagreed and ordered them to go away and pay court expenses of $366. When contacted for their reaction to the court’s landmark decision, the three plaintiffs, at a loss for words, could only comment: “That’s so gay.” [MSNBC]
Photo by Napoléon et la bêtise
A New York criminal court has upheld a stalking charge against a man who contacted Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels on several occasions to discuss the show’s alleged use of the man’s “personal thoughts” and “sense of humor” without permission. Court documents report that the stalker, Evans Pidhajecky, “appear[ed] at the producer’s home twice in December 2007, had ‘no legitimate purpose’ and gave Michaels ‘ample reason to be in fear.’”
While sources close to the case have expressed disapproval of Pidhajecky’s actions, they have suggested to Michaels that he bring the stalker on as a consultant to the show, noting that Pidhajecky, a humorless, droning tool with the mind of a 14-year-old frat boy who hasn’t made anyone laugh since the late 1990s, should fit right in with the current team over at SNL. [NY Law Journal via Law.com]
Former Cravath superlawyer and convicted sex perv James Colliton is now suing American Express for millions of dollars for revealing his location to authorities in 2006 while he was hiding and on the run from charges that he paid a woman to have sex with her 13- and 15-year-old daughters. In his suit, the so-called “Lolita Lawyer” claims that Canadian authorities would never have “falsely arrested” or “unlawfully detained” him if American Express hadn’t revealed that he had used his credit card to check into a hotel in Ontario.
In his own defense, the former associate at the world’s most prestigious law firm explained that he “wasn’t running from the law” and had traveled to Canada “only to attend some harness races,” pointing out that “you’re not a fugitive if you sign into a major chain hotel using your driver’s license and your American Express card.”
While Colliton’s reasoning has yet to win over the authorities, legal analysts have been quick to note that you’ve really gotta hand it to the training at Cravath. Here we have a publicly reviled fugitive, nailed dead to rights on both rape and prostitution-related charges, who thinks nothing of checking into a hotel with his own Amex card while he’s on the lam, and then turns around and sues Amex when they help police catch him. Clearly a man trained outside the esteemed Cravath System wouldn’t have had the legal chutzpah to go that extra mile. If he weren’t such a repugnant, delusional pervert cretin, we’d almost have to tip our hat to him. [NY Daily News]
Concerned that the deluge of press praising co-star Heath Ledger’s performance in the record-breaking mega-hit “The Dark Night” was overshadowing his own role in the film, Christian Bale took it upon himself to prove to the world that he can play a deranged criminal just as convincingly as Ledger. Against the advice of his agent and publicist, Bale allegedly assaulted his mother and sister early last week in a swank London hotel the night before the European premiere of the film.
The British media are reporting that Bale, 34, was arrested this morning for the assault, and a spokesman for the London police has confirmed that “A 34-year-old man attended a central London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested in connection with an allegation of assault.” Investigators have not yet confirmed what, specifically, provoked the assault, but sources close to the case have gone out on a limb and suggested that an actor who convincingly portrayed an American Psycho, willingly dropped to 125 pounds for an indie film no one saw, and almost got his face chopped off by a helicopter during a stunt for his latest flick—and has yet to land any major award noms—might, just might have some unresolved aggression issues at play. [HuffPost]
Photo by Alternate:Words
Marion Jones, the three-time Olympic gold medalist sentenced in January to six months in prison for lying to the feds about her steroid use and a multimillion-dollar check fraud scam, has asked President Bush to commute her sentence.
Inside sources at the White House have reported that while the President initially commended Jones for her efforts to conserve gas in these trying economic times, he did not believe that it was possible—or appropriate—to allow her to carpool to and from prison with other motorists. Attempts to reach the Office of the White House Press Secretary for further comment on the status of Jones’s request have as of yet remained unanswered. [Associated Press]