Cookbook Author Sues Comedian Seinfeld and His Wife
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
An author who claims Jerry Seinfeld’s wife plagiarized her cookbook sued the famous couple yesterday, finding no humor when the comedian compared the three-name author to the three-name killers of John Lennon and Martin Luther King.
The lawsuit, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for copyright and trademark infringement, was brought in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by Missy Chase Lapine, the author of “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals.”
“Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known comedian, and Jessica Seinfeld is his wife, but that does not give them license to slander and plagiarize,” the lawsuit said.
The Seinfelds’ lawyer, Richard Menaker, denied Ms. Lapine’s claims of defamation and plagiarism and suggested Ms. Lapine was seeking publicity to boost her book’s sales.
Mr. Menaker said there was “no basis” for any kind of legal claim of defamation.
In October, HarperCollins published Mrs. Seinfeld’s “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.”
