The Post has a follow-up to the suit filed yesterday by four women who claim they were sexually harassed (and, in one case, raped) by a former manager of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square. The women, who are seeking $600 million in damages from the former GM and the restaurant's parent company, Dennis Riese's Riese Organization, tell the paper that they're hoping the lawsuit ends up shutting down the company's entire chain of 113 restaurants. Unrelated: At least two of the four women are aspiring singers, in case you're curious: see here and here. [NY Post, previously]

It's just so perfect. Tribune Co. already boasts gnomish asshole CEO Sam Zell, who cusses out his own employees in public, and "Chief Innovation Officer" (ha) Lee Abrams, the dumbest guy in the newspaper industry. And now Eddy Hartenstein (pictured), who Tribune hired as the new publisher of the doomed LA Times last month, is telling LAT reporters that leaking memos to blogs is "treason":

It seems having oiled-up chicks traipsing around in bikinis didn't create such a friendly workplace for employees of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square. The restaurant was smacked with a $600 million lawsuit today: Four women allege that the restaurant's former general manager, Anthony Rakis, raped and sodomized a manager, harassed female waitresses, and forced prospective hires to strip down for "examinations." The women claim that the restaurant's owner, Dennis Riese, was part of the problem, too, helping to turn Hawaiian Tropic Zone "into a disgusting meat market." Riese hasn't responded to the charges yet, but we'll point out that this is the same man who told The New Yorker last year that he describes himself as a feminist ("I love women and believe in them") and chalked up any grievances to nature. "I don't think these girls are feeling exploited," he said. "If a bunch of guys are coming in and ogling them, it's because they're guys and those are girls! And that's part of our biological nature."

Citigroup's lawsuit against Wachovia and Wells Fargo is now public: Citi is asking for a whopping $60 billion (including $20 billion in compensatory damages and $40 billion in punitive damages) for breach of contract and tortious interference. Of course, the suit may be moot if the Fed brokers a deal between the three banks, as it has been suggesting. But if you're bored today and you're not interested in looking through Sarah Palin's tax returns (or you're interested to see what you get when you hire 80 lawyers to work round the clock for an entire weekend), the lawsuit is after the jump.

Congress has passed a bill compelling registered sex offenders to submit "email addresses, instant message addresses and other identifying Internet information" to law enforcement. The legislation is sponsored by John McCain, who is not uncoincidentally running for president. The bill, which has passed both houses of Congress and is expected to be signed into law by Bush, aims to protect children from sexual advances on social network sites. Facebook, MySpace, and others are meant to cross-check their user databases with the federal list, and, in the parlance of these types of laws, "delete online predators." But these bills are so broken from the start: what's to keep a past sex offender from just using multiple online identities? Oh, and then there's that whole sticky issue of protecting freedom of speech for those who've served their criminal sentences. Courts in Utah — yes, that Utah — have just ruled on that, providing bad news for those who supported the McCain bill.After a challenge to a similar state law in Utah last week, a federal judge restored a sex offender's right to anonymous speech online. Though the judge stated that this decision should not apply unilaterally to all registered sex offenders, her ruling is the first to question the conventional wisdom: that curbing online speech can curb sex crimes. Free speech advocates and social network analysts have long been claiming that this approach won't work. First, there's the problem of the expansive definition of "sex crime" — from violent assault to public nudity. On that basis, Flickr has at least one employee who, after bending over bare-assed for his colleagues, could be banned from the Internet. Add to that that state and Federal lawmakers still can't seem to grasp the qualitative difference between a sixteen year old flashing her boycrush and a fifty year old posing as the same sixteen year old. Toss with a little bit of election-year mania about being tough on crime, and you get a botched bill that may only drive sex offenders further from the public eye — the opposite of the safer, happier Internet McCain hoped to create. (Photo by soggydan)

Meet Ben Massing, a smoldering young (straight) model from Florida, who recently graced the pages of gay magazine Genre. And he was not happy about it. Indeed he's filing a lawsuit, claiming his privacy was violated because he only intended to use the be-underweared photos for his portfolio. This caused something of a foofaraw in the ogling gay community, people accusing him of being a homophobe. Now a gay magazine publisher has come to young Massing's defense. Jeff Woodward, who publishes another gay mag called Next, wrote in to gay site Queerty:

Wow, this is a proud mark of the global influence of the financially puny New York Times: a story it did in June has prompted one of the world's richest men to sue his own brother for more than $2 billion. Awesome! Anil Ambani says that his brother Mukesh (they each inherited half of the massive Indian conglomerate Reliance) smeared his good name in the Times, so he had no choice but to sue him, the Times, and two Indian papers for 100 billion rupees. Here's the offending passage that set him off:

New Facebook lawyer Ted Ullyot will have his hands full. Before Mark Zuckerberg came along, every college had a facebook — a collection of pictures of the incoming freshman class, distributed in print. But now, there's only one Facebook. Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard student who came up with an online facebook called HouseSystem prior to the creation of Facebook, has long disputed Zuckerberg's claim to the idea — and he's been disputing the company's name, too. Records from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office now show that Greenspan's suit to cancel Facebook's trademark has resumed, having survived two motions to dismiss. The most probable outcome here: Like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who claim they hired Zuckerberg to work on their college social network, ConnectU, Greenspan will get paid off with a piece of Facebook, too.

Over three days in June 1962, photographer Bert Stern took some 2,500 photos of actress Marilyn Monroe, just six weeks before she died. You know, the pictures where she's naked. The ones that inspired Lindsay Lohan to go nude for New York magazine (Stern shot those, too). They became the iconic images of Monroe, the Tragic Star, and Stern has been making bank on them since. Three days of work have essentially funded his entire life. And now he wants more! He's suing the men who ran the old magazine Eros, claiming he lent some of the photos from the collection (called The Last Sitting) and these gents never returned them. So he's demanding that the precious, irreplaceable photos be returned or, you know, they could just give him $700,000 and do whatever they want with 'em. Hell, either way he's asking for an additional $1,000,000 in punitive damages. (Man, 45 years after her death, the Marilyn economy is booming! Some dude in Australia just paid $14,500 for 2 1/2 minutes of Marilyn footage. That's 90-something dollars a second!) I think we can all learn a little something from Mr. Stern, who hasn't stopped working entirely, but cashed in early and never looked back (or, I guess you could say he looks back all the time). Someone will still be interested in hokey philosophical musings on The Hills in 40 years, right? 'Cause I don't have any savings.

Citigroup may be struggling to remain solvent amid the global financial meltdown, but don't think that the bank's attorneys at Skadden Arps are too busy with the crisis to defend Citi's good name. Yesterday the bank took action against Citi-Mobile, a Glendale, California-based company responsible for some of those ridiculous "mobile billboards" that manage to both clog up city streets and destroy the environment at the same time. The much bigger Citi, which Skadden rather optimistically describes in court docs as "one of the largest and most renowned" banks in the world, is a little bit concerned that the public will think the financial giant decided to buy a bunch of trucks, paint them crazy colors, and make money by marketing roast beef subs and cameras to innocent pedestrians. So they're asking a court to prohibit Citi-Mobile (and its parent company Citi-Advertising) from using the hallowed "Citi" name. Here's a thought: Why not just acquire the company? Citigroup would diversify a bit. And the mobile billboard business can't be any riskier than the financial services industry these days, can it? The full lawsuit after the jump.

Ever since he was a little boy, former Livedoor executive Daisuke Enomoto dreamed of going to space, but has ended up in court alleging fraud on the part of Space Adventures, the space tourism company which runs flights out of Star City, Russia. He was all set to realize his dream after paying $21 million for 10-days in space, including a spacewalk wearing the costume of his favorite Gundam character. But he got kicked off the rocket for X Prize founder Anousheh Ansari in 2006 after a spot medical check disqualified him. And that's where the fun begins.Enomoto claims the checkup results were a convenient lie, and that Space Adventures had never had permission to offer the spacewalk but demanded another $10 million from him for the privelege anyway. He also alleges that Ansari basically bought her way ahead of him in line by making an "investment," which he was also pestered to do. Space Adventures's attorney John Villa says the company will not be offering a refund, and that's that. Sounds like a typical tourist package shakedown, frankly — wonder how much they'll take Ultima creator Richard Garriott and Google cofounder Sergey Brin for between now and liftoff?

There was a time when third world countries would rip off any Western product they wanted to. Because how much time were US companies really willing to invest wading through dusty Asian market stalls looking for bootlegs of their precious brand names? But things have changed! As China and India have grown into serious global economic powerhouses over the past decade, they've been forced to respect intellectual property laws in order to maintain good business relations with the West. Which makes this whole "Hari Puttar" thing a bit of a stretch. Warner Bros. sued an Indian film company for making a movie called "Hari Puttar," claiming that it was a ripoff of Harry Potter. They just lost the case in an Indian court. Home team advantage? Actually, when you hear the facts it seems more like sheer bullying or paranoia on Warner Bros. part:

State authorities, accustomed to controlling gambling within their borders, have been largely frustrated in their efforts to police Internet betting. Kentucky judge Thomas Wingate has hit on a novel strategy: Taking away offshore gambling sites' domain names. The state is taking control of 141 domain names, including sportsbook.com and caribbeangold.com. Novel, but unlikely to be effective; sites will switch to other countries' domains, or — worst-case scenario — have gamblers type in numerical IP addresses. What, you think gambling addicts will balk at having to remember four numbers? The State of Kentucky, which is already in the gambling business, should just expand online and compete directly with its offshore rivals. That seems easier.

Dan Rather filed that big $70 million lawsuit against CBS last year because, he said, they hung him out to dry like a coonskin on a tree branch when it turned out there were problems with his story about George W. Bush's National Guard Service. CBS said Rather was crazier than a coyote with Mexican jumping beans in his anus. (Okay, that's enough). Some of his suit was thrown out in April, and now two more of his remaining four claims have been dismissed. But he's still alive!

You won't find a big grin on Dan Rather's face today. Yesterday a judge threw out two of the four remaining claims that are part of the newsman's $70 million lawsuit against CBS, including the most serious allegation, that the network committed fraud for "falsely promising to help restore his reputation." Rather still plans to press ahead with the his less-serious charges of of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. And the disappointing development didn't seem to put off his lawyer. He told reporters that the case is "still alive" and the breach-of-contract claim would be a "slam dunk." [NYP]

Remember Andrei Vavilov, the Russian hedge fund manager who sued the owners of the Plaza for "unobstructed floor to ceiling windows," "lower-than-represented ceiling heights," and "unappealing drainage grates," and asked for his $10 million deposit back plus another $30 million in damages? Well, now El-Ad, the company that controls the luxe condo building, is countersuing, accusing Vavilov of filing a "sham lawsuit" and for defamation. [Curbed, NYP]

♦ Nightlife impresario Noah Tepperberg (left) says bottle sales at Marquee have slipped 10 percent this quarter. [GS]
♦ Jean-Georges Vongerichten is paying $1.75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by waiters over skimmed tips at his restaurants. [Reuters]
♦ Todd English's Libertine opened inside Jason Pomeranc's Gild Hall hotel last night. [NYO]
♦ The city's best restaurants are in Hell's Kitchen; the best bars are in the East Village. At least that's what Time Out says. [TONY]
♦ Now that Dessert Studio has closed, Will Goldfarb is planning a move to Bali. [NRN via GS]
♦ Armed robbers are targeting Starbucks locations. [NY1 via Eater]
♦ JE Englebert, the owner of Suzie Wong and Prime, may sue the developers of the Gramercy Starck building on East 23rd Street because he doesn't like the small emanating from the McDonald's on the ground floor. [NYP]

It looks like Russian financier Andrei Vavilov isn't the only person unhappy with his Plaza apartment. The unnamed buyer of PH2001 is now suing, too, claiming he was the victim of fraud and deceptive trade practices. He's asking for his $6.5 million deposit back and at least $350,000 in legal fees. Good luck! [NYP]

Gnomish Tribune CEO Sam Zell has finally deigned to respond to the fact that his own current and former employees at the LA Times filed a lawsuit against him two days ago for, essentially, making Tribune suck. We imagine Zell spent a full day throwing things around his office and carving "F.U!" in his desk with a pen knife before he calmed down enough to make a statement. Though he couldn't help but include the fact that he's outraged, absolutely outraged, at the (motherfuckers) who filed this suit. Read Zell's seething statement after the jump:

Clever little diversion, Joe Moinian! The same day the real estate mogul's son and heir apparent was treated to a splashy story in the Observer, his real estate company was hit with a lawsuit over its latest development, 95 Wall Street. It seems the name that Moinian picked for the glitzy financial district building, Dwell95, isn't sitting well with the home design magazine that goes by the same name. Yesterday afternoon California-based Dwell filed suit against Moinian in US District Court, alleging that Moinian's development—which was designed by Philippe Starck and officially launched on Monday—violates a trademark held by the magazine since 1999. The mag argues that not only did Moinian rip off the name, his company also "depicted this trademark using a font and style that are nearly indistinguishable from the font and style used by Dwell." Today's suit wasn't a surprise for the Iranian-born tycoon. According to the legal papers, Dwell contacted Moinian to try and settle the matter back in March, and later engaged in "face-to-face" settlement talks with Moinian's company but never reached an agreement. And while the suit doesn't specify a dollar amount that Dwell is seeking, it's worth noting that they're asking for "three times Defendants' profits from its use of the Dwell trademark," which could add up in a hurry when you're marketing $2,700-a-month studios! The full lawsuit below.