Oh, Law and Order, you left us too soon! If only you had been around to thinly fictionalize the tale of the opera singer and the family practitioner, fighting over frozen pad thai at the Upper East Side Trader Joe's.

Of course, on Law and Order, (at least) one of the women would have died; in real life, the two are still alive, embroiled in a legal battle—the proceedings of which began today.

The dispute seems to have begun over the grocery store's last package of frozen pad thai, which was being claimed by both the son of family practitioner and sometime television personality Dr. Cathleen London, and the husband of mezzo-soprano Marcella Caprario (also a "multilingual elementary school teacher"). According to Dr. London, Caprario slapped her in the face after London attempted to come to her son's defense, as the New York Post gleefully reports:

"She told me, 'Get the f—k away from me,'" London, a family practitioner and frequent TV talking head, told a Manhattan judge of her alleged attacker's supposedly off-color coloratura performance just before the slap.

The lyrics were recalled by London only in part, but apparently included a recurring liet motif of, 'Get the f—k away you b—-h."

"She said, 'Get the f—k away you b—-h, you f——-g b—-h',' " London testified. "She just kept saying, 'Back off, back the f—k off, you b—-h.' She just kept repeating things like that."

In the original Law and Order, of course, there would be a plot twist, like that London and Caprario were having an affair, or, like Trader Joe himself had murdered the opera singer. I guess we'll just have to settle for the SVU version of this crime, wherein the opera singer turns out to be an Eastern European sex slave.

[NYP; NYT]