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| July 20, 2007 |
By: Mark Fass |
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he life of "Gong Show" host Chuck Barris has taken yet another strange turn.
Barris, who claimed in his 2002 autobiography "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" to have moonlighted as a CIA assassin while emceeing the popular 1970s TV talent show, is locked into a heated -- and thus far mostly losing -- legal battle with his 85-year-old co-op neighbor, Dorothea Weitzner.
Although technically a non-party to the case, Barris, 78, filed the series of complaints against Weitzner that led to the co-op board's subsequent eviction proceedings against her.
That skirmish, now stretching into its fifth year, raises legal and practical dilemmas unique to New York City: How bad must a tenant's behavior be before a co-op moves to evict her? And just how difficult is it to remove a tenant from a New York City co-op?
Barris and Weitzner's conflict takes place on two fronts, the Manhattan Supreme Court and the 39th floor of the Upper East Side's Trump Plaza, where Barris and Weitzner have adjoining penthouses.
As Barris tells it in court papers, the problems began the day Weitzner moved in, in the late 1990s.
"The first thing she ever said to me was this: 'You better shut your door quietly or I'll sue you," Barris wrote in a 2003 letter to Trump Plaza's board of directors. Weitzner's alleged vitriol quickly escalated. "Her screaming has changed from just cursing and shouting to yelling vile obscenities and death threats."
Barris and his wife, Mary, recorded the loud, persistent, furious, all-hours rants that they claim came through their wall. Barris' letter to the board listed about a dozen examples, the font-size apparently increasing and decreasing to reflect the relative volume of specific diatribes.
In addition to a wide range of angry obscenities, Weitzner's attacks -- which she largely confirmed in later depositions -- vacillated between ad hominem threats, decrying of Ms. Barris' lack of virtue and berating Mr. Barris' for marrying a non-Jew.
In a 2005 letter to the board, Mr. Barris again detailed Weitzner's threats, which included, "What you need is your head cracked open. I'll get you, just you wait ... I'll get you, you cockroach. You faggot. Your wife's mother's a slut."
Weitzner -- a 1943 Barnard College graduate and Columbia Law School dropout with 25 patents and a number of self-run businesses to her name -- also allegedly banged on their shared wall so loudly that it awakened, and even frightened, the couple.
Weitzner frequently accused the Barrises of spying on her apartment, as evidenced -- according to Weitzner herself -- by their shared use of the same venereal-disease specialist. In a deposition taken in the course of the ejectment proceedings, an attorney for Trump Plaza asked Weitzner if she threatened to slice Mr. Barris' body part.
"I might have said that," she answered. "You know, I'm honest, because I was in a state of paroxysms of hatred for this man who had copied ideas of mine from my telephone conversations. He used my doctor when I had herpes."
"Is that [Dr. Michael] Kalman?"
"You know how many doctors there are? There are about 10,000 doctors. He picked [mine]. It's unbelievable, the guy is very tricky."
Barris repeatedly complained to the Trump Plaza's board of directors. On two separate occasions, his phone calls to the police led to Weitzner's involuntary confinement for psychiatric services, once over night and once for one month, according to documents filed by Weitzner's attorney, solo-practitioner Kenneth J. Glassman.
BOARD TAKES ACTION
Eventually, shortly after Barris' March 2003 letter, the board formally initiated ejectment proceedings.
As Trump Plaza Owners v. Weitzner, 110351/03, wended its way through the system, the board pursued additional means of stemming Weitzner's alleged harassment of her neighbors. The board has successfully moved both for a preliminary injunction proscribing the offending behavior and then, when Weitzner refused to abide by its strictures, a contempt order, which resulted in an award for fees against Weitzner.
New York City also initiated competency proceedings, which the judge overseeing the case, Supreme Court Justice Barbara R. Kapnick, dismissed.
Last month, just over four years after the board initially filed suit, Kapnick threw out the ejectment claims on procedural grounds, leaving only the actions for a permanent injunction and attorney fees.
Kapnick found that the board's service of its 2002 notice to cure to Weitzner's post office box -- the address Weitzner's stationary directs correspondents to use -- constituted a fatal defect, notwithstanding the board's subsequent service to Weitzner's apartment.
"[T]his court is constrained to find that plaintiff's claims for ejectment were brought prior to proper service of the required predicate notice," Kapnick wrote. "Such a defect cannot be remedied after the commencement of the action, as plaintiff has attempted to do here."
Weitzner's attorney, Glassman, said he plans to press forward with the appeal of the preliminary injunction and to contest the permanent injunction, though he discounts their potential efficacy.
"All [the permanent injunction] will be is an order directing Ms. Weitzner to be a good girl and then in the event she's not, they have the option of trying to have her held in contempt," Glassman said Wednesday. "So if she annoys Mr. and Mrs. Barris she can either be arrested or fined."
Trump Plaza recently switched counsel to solo-practitioner Frederick Mehl from Steven D. Sladkus, a partner at Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz.
Sladkus declined to comment. Mehl did not return a call for comment.
James A. Purdy of Vittoria & Purdy represents the Barrises, who are not parties to this case.
"My clients are extremely nice, courteous people who have withstood just a barrage of harassment for years," Purdy said Wednesday. "They've left it up to the management to take care of the situation and are very disappointed that at this point they have completely failed."
UNUSUAL CASE
Richard Siegler, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who writes about co-ops and condominiums for the Law Journal and who is not involved in this case, said that aggrieved co-op board members need not fear this atypical case.
Although the Trump Plaza action is more than 4 years old and still going strong, and the recently resolved ejectment case against Manhattan real-estate attorney Steven R. Lapidus took 15 years, most boards can expect to see speedier results.
Siegler said that the 2003 Court of Appeals decision on which Trump Plaza relied, 40 West 67th Street v. Pullman, 1 -- which validated a co-op's right to terminate a proprietary lease for "objectionable conduct" -- markedly "speeds things up."
The shareholder vote, co-op hearing and subsequent court hearing required under Pullman "typically take a year or two," Siegler said. In other words, if the co-op board initiated another Pullman action against Weitzner, it could expect to have her ejected by around early 2009.
Mark Fass reports for the New York Law Journal, an affiliate of the Daily Business Review.
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