Queen-of-mean and condominium board president Joan Rivers scored a first-round victory in a legal battle to glean $200,000 in unpaid condominium fees from the owner of the building’s least expensive unit.
The Belize-based owner, Real Estate Holdings Group, was denied immediate access to the basement apartment at 1 East 62nd Street in a ruling by New York State judge Anil Singh.
In an effort to get the owners to cough up allegedly unpaid fees, Rivers and her partners have reportedly engaged in “physical sabotage,” ripping cable box wires and squirting glue into locks, according to the $15 million suit.
Adding drama to the fire, former occupant Elizabeth Hazan, who tried to crash in the pad on Sept. 28 with the owners’ permission, was refused entry and threatened with a call to the police, the suit claims.
“It really boggles the mind to think that in today’s day and age, this would happen,” S. Neil Meehan, a director of Real Estate Holdings Group, said in an affidavit, cited by the New York Daily News.
Rivers, who described herself as the “scary lady upstairs” in a New York Times interview last summer, also stands accused of harassing Hazan.
“She has called me various names and has been slandering me for years,” Hazan said in court papers cited by the Daily News.
Judge Singh ordered both parties to return to court later this month to hash out the long-running war. Hazan’s lawyer Darius Marzec did not respond to an email from the Daily News seeking comment, nor was there any immediate reaction from Rivers’ representative. [NYP] — Julie Strickland