Taylor Stein, the mother of Estée Lauder CEO William Lauder's love child, is going to court to get him to pay a $9.5 million settlement he agreed to in exchange for her silence.

Another lawsuit has been filed against pervy American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, alleging he sexually harasses women and inflates his company's profits, as usual. But! AA has now filed its own suit saying that Nikky Yang (the ex-employee who's filed this new suit) is disgruntled and stole money while she was at AA and was always hitting Dov Charney up for money even after she left. (Yang is represented by Keith Fink, the attorney already in an ongoing feud with AA). And AA's suit includes many amusing emails from Yang to Dov, including this one from 2004 promising him a nice hot massage girl!:

It turns out that frequently rehabbed former Insider host and overall smarmy dude Pat O'Brien is an underminer. And one remarkably lacking in self-awareness, at that! We really expect more from men with mustaches. See, Pat just got back from Iowa—he's "a little bit of a favorite son there"—and met the real people. To help them (somehow?), he decided to email this undermine-spirational message to everyone at The Insider and Entertainment Tonight:

Passion: it's a word. But for Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko, it's a word! That exclamation point represents passion—Dave's passion for his book, Eat This, Not That! Yesterday we heard the rumor that Dave, Julia Allison's old boyfriend, was looking for a new publicist to get him back on the Today show (he said no, only his magazine is hiring a publicist, not him). And we hinted at the existence of an internal email in which Zinczenko grandiosely compared his ab-centric book to "Barak [sic] Obama." Well now that email, from February, is in hand! "Who had a better last three weeks-Barak Obama, or Eat This, Not That? Crazy, audacious comparison, I know, but stay with me here." Okay, go:

And so it begins. Tribune CEO Sam Zell announced in an email today to employees that he'll be cutting 400-500 positions across the company's various newspaper divisions. "Unfortunately, I can't turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months," Zell wrote. "Further, while I will do everything in my power to drive, pull and drag this company forward, I can't promise we won't see additional position eliminations in the future." So reassuring! In an email to Los Angeles Times staff, publisher David Hiller said a third of the 150 spots he expects to cut will come from the newsroom. Last week a dozen Tribune HR employees got the Zell ax, and in Florida, the CEO warned Sun-Sentinel employees more cuts were ahead. "If you want to visit the corporate office, you ought to do it in the next month." Both Hiller's and Zell's emails are after the jump.

Maybe Julia Allison should just stick to communicating via smoke signals, since everything the woman writes on anything more permanent is made immediately public. Of course, that might interfere with the dating columnist's constant Tumblr updates. Former New York Press sex columnist Kelly Kreth (the one who was fired for taste, not plagiarism) called Allison out today for lifting an imaginary game from one of Kreth's old Press columns for her blog. In the comments, Allison responded: "I've never heard of Kelly Kreth until this post. In fact, I've only read one issue of the NY Press, and that's when they called me an Asshole on the cover." Oh, Julia. You know perfectly well it's dangerous to tell a publicity whore that nobody knows who she is! Next thing we knew, an email found its way to our inbox, in which Allison tells Kreth that she "purposely doesn't read other dating columnists, I don't want to be influenced," and also warns the ex-Presser to "be VERY VERY careful with Gawker." Someone probs should have given Allison the same advice about Kreth too, we're thinking. After the jump, the sad little exchange.

The Freelancers Union—whose ranks include non-staff writers and photographers—issued another sincere apology this afternoon via email for badly-communicated changes to member insurance earlier this month. "The past six weeks have been some of the toughest in Freelancers Union's history," it reads. Funny, union members were just saying the same thing about the last six weeks of their lives! Email after the jump.

Is this what it takes to sate an angry mob of permalancers? JoAnne Griffith, the HR exec who delivered to the cable network's freelancers the news before the holidays that their benefits were being cut, is out. MTV, which was forced to reverse the cuts after a walkout by non-salaried workers, came out with the usual boilerplate on Griffith's departure. (Really, why do they even bother?) "She's been a phenomenal leader and great champion for MTV Networks,""This is a large, complex company, and with JoAnne's great human touch and innovative approach to HR, we continue to set a high bar and strive for the best for you," an internal email sent this morning to MTV employees reads. Irreplaceable? No. Replacement Catherine Houser, "has the people skills, innovative ideas, and passion for our company and its employees that we need in an HR leader." Phew. Email and official release after the jump.

Recently-ordained (and gnomish) Tribune boss Sam Zell sent around an email today to his "partners," alerting them to "some disturbing language" he's heard around the office, but far more importantly? To his brand-new blog! Aw. It's so cute when fuzzy-haired senior citizens try to work the Internets. Leaked email below.

"It's a great day," newly-minted CEO Sam Zell says in an email to his "fellow investor" on his first day heading up Tribune Company. Mixing his metaphors and going for grandiose, Zell anounces an era in which the Tribune saves not just your soul but our nation's as well. "We will take intelligent risks and reward innovation," he says. "We will tear down bureaucracy and reward entrepreneurial spirit. We will compete fiercely but with integrity." We will use anaphora! We will! We will! We will! Email after the jump.

Scott Donaton announced a few weeks ago that he's leaving Ad Age, where he was finally named publisher back in February, for the publisher slot at Entertainment Weekly. In an email sent to pals last week (one that reads very much like a cover letter to a job application!), he enthuses about "how much passion" he carried for the "brand" of Ad Age and how excited he is to move on to a "great brand," particularly because his new job is located at the intersection of all things he holds dear, including... branding.

After hemorrhaging about $2 million per year and failing to sell itself to Robert De Niro, the Observer has found itself a baby daddy: Jared Kushner, a 25-year-old NYU law student and son of formerly incarcerated Jersey developer Charles Kushner, has purchased the paper for under $10 million. Today most of the staff should be meeting their boy wonder for the first time; Kushner sent the following email to his new toys last night:

Feeling stressed? Is all that holiday cheer just bringing you down? Has the weight of a crumbling institution done quite a number on your back? Yeah, that's what we thought — but thankfully, the Gray Lady is looking out for you: