A New York Supreme Court judge has recused himself from a case involving an alleged $11 million real estate fraud and referred the matter to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.
The suit involves 315 West 35th Street, a 60,000-square-foot Midtown building that Isaac Chetrit, a cousin of the prominent real estate investor Joe Chetrit, has been trying to foreclose on. Read More
While I’m not looking to take business from the mouths of the real estate bar, let’s face it: if you’re serious about being a player in this real estate game, there’s a fundamental body of law you must be familiar with. And the court’s interpretation and reinterpretation of that “corpus juris” is what requires us to visit important cases from time to time.
Over the next several months, The Commercial Observer will be reviewing 10 of the most significant leasing cases in ascending order of importance. Read More
Even in death, Normal Mailer’s legacy lives on. The pugnacious writer and Brooklyn resident died in 2007, but the controversy surrounding his unique apartment is just heating up, The New York Times reports.
In the 1960s, Mailer constructed a particularly quaint space on the top floor of a classic Brooklyn brownstone , according Read More
Have NewsCorps’ dastardly tactics really hopped the pond? A.C Lawrence & Co, an up and coming brokerage in New York City, would have you believe as much. The brokerage has accused a competitor of hacking into their computer system and stealing information about exclusive listings, The Wall Street Journal reports. Read More
Yesterday, a Manhattan court granted the former National Arts Club president O. Alden James an injunction to postpone a hearing that would most likely lead to his eviction from the club’s swanky Gramercy Park mansion.
Mr. James, who was head of the club for 25 years before the board decided to give him the boot Read More
Manhattan Judge Denny Chin has extended the deadline for a settlement to be reached between the Authors Guild and Google Books until 2012, reports Reuters. The Guild, along with the Association of American Publishers, sued Google Books back in 2005 for scanning and digitally publishing books still under copyright. A settlement was reached but Read More
Authorities are throwing cold water on a transcontinental story of alleged fraud involving the CEO of a major U.S. bank: Indian police say that Citi CEO Vikram Pandit is unlikely to be pulled back to his homeland for questioning in an inquiry concerning one of his bank’s branches on the subcontinent. Previous reports had Read More
Three men arrested in December during the authorities’ wild crackdown on insider trading have been granted bail. Walter Shimoon, James Fleishman and Mark Longoria, all arrested on Dec. 16, but were set free today by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Francis. Mr. Shimoon carried a bounty of $150,000 and Mr. Longoria a relative pittance of $50,000. Read More
Update: A Citi spokesperson contacted The Observer with the following statement:
As this individual well knows, Citi identified the fraud and immediately reported the matter to the regulators and law enforcement agencies. His claims against senior executives are completely without basis and we intend to contest them vigorously. It was on Citi complaint that the Read More
Winifred Jiau, the former consultant for expert-networker Primary Global who was arrested last week as part of the massive U.S. probe into insider trading, was today denied bail by a federal magistrate, according to Reuters. The decision has got to sting for Ms. Jiau, since she had previously been granted bail in exchange Read More
