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Subway Pug Owner Plans Lawsuit Against NY Post, NYC
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 11, 2010
Modified Jan 11, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 11, 2010
Modified Jan 11, 2010
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The Greenpoint woman who was arrested after trying to carry her sick pug out of the subway is planning to sue the NY Post for defamation, and possibly the city of New York. To recap, last June Chrissie Brodigan, a VP for Online Media at Plum TV, got into an angry altercation with a cop who had stopped her at the Bedford Avenue L station for transporting her dog outside a carrier.
Brodigan claims Officer Joel Witriol, NYC's first Hasidic cop, punched her, grabbed her breasts, and told her, 'If you're going to act like a woman I'm going to treat you like a woman." But a day after we published her account, the NY Post cited a witness, Viane Delgado, who supposedly heard Brodigan yell, "You f---ing Jew, you're not even human. Jewish people think they own everything." (Brodigan denies this.)
The Post's witness, who was not cited in any other news report, is the mystery at the center of Brodigan's potential lawsuit. Jonathan D. Warner, her attorney, tells us he filed a notice of claim against the city last September, and will sue the Post if the tabloid refuses to reveal the basis for the anti-Semetic allegation, which Brodigan says cost her her job. "Either the Post made up the story or received misinformation from the police," said Warner. "We have tried to find the witness, but we don't believe she exists. That's not to say Fenton and Blau [the Post reporters] could not have been deceived by someone."
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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