Boutique hotel pioneer Richard Born is throwing his weight around in his $50 million legal fight with business partner Gerald Rosengarten, and the judge is having none of it.
Born’s legal team spent nine months ignoring a court order for digital communications related to the case, then abruptly delivered 500,000 pages of documents, some of it unrelated junk mail, Crain’s reported.
State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich called Born’s actions “unacceptable” and “inexcusable.” Born’s attorney, Edward Rudofsky, denied any unprofessional conduct.
Rosengarten, the designer of the 70s-era “leisure suit,” is suing Born, the hotelier behind the Maritime, the Mercer, the Greenwich and the Pod, for $50 million for allegedly cutting him out of a deal to sell the penthouse suite and other apartments at the Bowery Hotel, which they co-own. Rosengarten also claims Born stopped making equity payments to him for his 12 percent stake just after the suit was filed.
The Real Deal reported earlier this month that Rosengarten is the subject of an eight-figure lawsuit that accuses him and fashion designer Elie Tahari of cheating a New Jersey-based realty firm out of an exclusive ground lease and purchase in Soho. [Crain’s] – Ariel Stulberg