David Copperfield disappeared, but apartment disaster was no illusion: lawsuit

David Copperfield may have mastered the grand illusion, but his bag of tricks doesn’t extend to his Midtown apartment. 

The celebrity magician allegedly “trashed” his penthouse at 117 East 57th Street, leaving the 54th-floor unit in a “state of utter disrepair,” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York.

The board of managers at the building known as the Galleria are suing Copperfield in an effort to force him to repair damage in his apartment and to pay for a costly valve replacement, which the board attributes to his alleged neglect. 

Pictures of the penthouse included in the complaint show paint peeling off the walls and ceilings, mold and brown residue covering a bathtub and what appears to be a water-stained carpet. 

“The level of dilapidation and decay in Copperfield’s Unit far exceeds a purely cosmetic issue,” the complaint states. “To say that he trashed the Unit is an understatement.”

The allegations in the lawsuit are the latest in a litany of complaints about the magician’s care of the unit since he purchased it for $7.4 million in 1997. Copperfield made headlines in 2015 when his rooftop pool burst and flooded his penthouse and other apartments on the floors below. 

Copperfield moved out of the apartment in 2018 and terminated the staff previously charged with its upkeep, according to the complaint. After his departure, the board alleges Copperfield failed to maintain the mechanical equipment exclusively servicing his apartments, resulting in an incident with a drain valve that sent a “cascade of water” into other apartments, elevator shafts and hallways. 

The board estimates the damage to total around $2.5 million. 

An architect hired to evaluate the property earlier this year found the unrepaired water damage is threatening the building’s concrete structure, as well as the health and safety of residents in neighboring apartments, the board claimed in the suit.

The board alleges they sent the report to Copperfield, but he only made “band-aid repairs” to the unit and did not address more serious concerns. 

“In typical fashion, Copperfield refuses to confront the consequences of his actions and denies all responsibility for the damage he has caused to the building and his former neighbors,” the complaint reads. 

The lawsuit states that Copperfield is looking to offload the unit, though the property isn’t currently listed. 

Copperfield could not be reached for comment.

In 2016, Curbed described Copperfield’s home as the “city’s most unique penthouse” consisting of a “spaceship-like assemblage of glass levels on top of a Midtown condo building.” 

At the time, the 16,000-square-foot apartment, originally built for General Motors heir Stewart Mott, was filled with antique arcade games, water guns and paintings of dogs dressed as humans. 

Earlier this year, the magician landed back in the news cycle when more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct spanning from the 1980s to 2014, according to an investigation by the Guardian. More than half of the women said they were teenagers at the time of the alleged incidents. Copperfield denied any wrongdoing. 

Copperfield broke Las Vegas price records in 2016 when he paid $17.6 million for a 31,000-square-foot mansion in the city’s high-end Summerlin neighborhood. 

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