Imagine all the people, living life in peace.

Are the days of airing the Dakota's dirty laundry finally nearing an end? Hedge fund manager Alphonse Fletcher Jr.’s lawsuit against the board of the fabled Upper West Side co-op still stands, but he and the lawsuit are standing all by themselves.

The two law firms representing Mr. Fletcher have been allowed to withdraw from the case, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing unpaid bills and irreconcilable differences—the culprits that seem to end every once-happy relationship.

The unpaid bill part is particularly bad news from Mr. Fletcher, given that the crux of his lawsuit against the co-op board is that he was financially fit to buy another apartment neighboring his own and that the board's denial of his bid amounted to discrimination (Mr. Fletcher is black). The board has claimed that the turn-down was the result of Mr. Fletcher's shaky financials.

Mr. Fletcher has, apparently, had problems paying off his legal teams in the past. The Journal reports that court filings by Mr. Fletcher's fund show that when it filed for bankruptcy-court protection, it owed more than $2 million to law firms.

The allegations in Mr. Fletcher's lawsuit extended well beyond his own personal situation (he claimed, among other things, that the board made ethnic slurs against prospective residents and denied another black resident, Roberta Flack, the right to install a bathtub in her apartment), but it could be much harder for Mr. Fletcher to win his suit if there are strong indications that the board had good reason to think he couldn't afford to carry a third apartment.

Moreover, finding another firm to take the case pro-bono seems unlikely. Law firms don't usually do charity work for Wall Street tycoons who are miffed that their application to buy a third apartment in a tony c0-op was rejected.

Mr. Fletcher has until December 20 to hire a new lawyer, although extensions often allow lawsuits to live on for years and years, so we don't necessarily expect to see much change in the next few weeks. But who knows? Maybe Mr. Fletcher will drop the lawsuit, maybe co-op board president Bruce Barnes will decide he doesn't want to sell his palatial apartment for $29.6 million after all, maybe by next year's autumn potluck the building, if not the world, will live as one.

kvelsey@observer.com

The famous Central Park West co-op where John Lennon was murdered became embroiled in a lawsuit earlier this week accusing the Dakota's board of discrimination against some of its residents, particularly former board chair Alphonse Fletcher Jr., who brought the suit in part because he was prevented from buying a neighboring unit. Now, a Dutch banker has found a buyer for his first-floor Dakota pied-à -terre, but prosecutors in his home country are trying to stop the sale because they claim ownership of the property.

Jan-Dirk Paarlberg is a Dutch investor with "extensive real estate holding in the Netherlands," according to The Journal. Paarlberg was convicted last summer of fraud in connection with a $23.5 million extrortion scheme. He now faces up to four and a half years in prison, which he is fighting, but it does not sound like he has much to return to:

Dutch authorities also announced that they had seized properties owned by Mr. Paarlberg in Portugal, France and the Netherlands Antilles. They also seized a penthouse in Rotterdam, apartment buildings, a wine collection, and paintings by Renoir, Picasso and Van Dongen and other art work.

The co-op, which Paarlberg apparently never occupied, is in contract for $4.4 million. That is $100,000 less than Paarlberg bought it for in 2001—from none other than Alphonse Fletcher Jr.

Speaking of, the co-op's current board president, Bruce Barnes, spoke with Gothamist about why, exactly, Fletcher had been denied the unit he wanted:

One of the rules of the building is: "If you own an apartment in the building already, the only thing you can buy is small rooms without kitchens, or adjacent ones if you're going to combine apartments into one." Barnes told us that Fletcher Jr. already has a fifth floor apartment, and a small penthouse (without a kitchen), but the board bent their own rules to allow him to buy a different apartment in the building for his mother. To make sure he didn't use it for himself, they imposed certain restrictions, which Fletcher Jr. then used as part of his argument as to how they were discriminating against him.

Who can blame Fletcher for trying, though? Can a guy ever have too many apartments at the Dakota?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

A city-shattering lawsuit has been filed by Wall Street tycoon Alphonse Fletcher Jr. alleging that the board of the storied Central Park West co-op has a grave history of discriminating against not only applicants but owners like Fletcher, who has two apartments there. The banker, a resident since 1992, brought the suit after he tried to buy a neighboring apartment and was allegedly denied by the board for suspicious reasons.

The lawsuit's explosive allegations include claims that board members made ethnic slurs against prospective residents, including describing one couple as part of the "Jewish mafia" and suggesting that a Hispanic applicant was interested in a first-floor apartment so that he could more easily buy drugs on the street. The applicant, who was rejected, was married to a "prominent financially well-qualified white woman," according to the suit, and though neither is named, the timing and circumstances suggest that it was [Antonio] Banderas.

The suit accuses the board of several other instances of treating minorities unfairly, including repeatedly denying another black owner -- the singer Roberta Flack -- permission to install a new bathtub and then joking about it. Mr. Fletcher also accuses the board of self-dealing: shortly after his request was denied last year, a member of the board who lives on the same floor put her own apartment up for sale, offering it as a package deal with the apartment Mr. Fletcher wanted to buy.

Could that last fact, a spurned sale, be the real reason for the suit? The Dakota's board denied any wrongdoing to The Times, saying this was simply a matter of Fletcher's financial situation.

And while Antonio Banderas, apparently the "Hispanic applicant" alluded to in Fletcher's lawsuit, never moved into the Dakota, there are indeed a number of minorities who do or have lived in the building. In addition to Roberta Flack, there is Yoko Ono, Paul Goldberger, Connie Chung and José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón. Perhaps it's just that Fletcher is not one of the building's numerous artistic types.

Now something could dispel the prejudicial pretenses for good. It looks like the board of the Dakota may allow a former butler for one of its owners to finally move into a studio he inherited. The Journal reports that Indra B. Tamang, the former employee of actors Ruth Ford and Zachary Scott, has just gone to contract on another apartment Ford had willed to him, a three-bedroom unit that looks to have fetched $4.5 million.

For a time, it looked like the board might not allow someone so lowly to live in the building, according to The Journal, but it appears an exception has been made.

But the board, which usually operates under a deep cloak of anonymity, issued a rare statement saying that Mr. Tamang's "prior capacity as an employee of a Dakota resident would not adversely affect our decision about his residing here."

"We at The Dakota are proud that for many years ours has been an extraordinarily diverse community of residents," the statement said.

Tamang has spent four decades in New York, but he was born in Nepal. If he's allowed in, the former butler will certainly become a working-class hero.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo