Metro

Bernie Kerik’s lawsuit against celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina moved to NY

Celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina has scored home-field advantage in his bitter legal fight against Bernie Kerik.

A New Jersey federal judge on Friday agreed to move the disgraced former NYPD commissioner’s malpractice suit against Tacopina – who recently represented shamed Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez in a failed bid to get his Major League Baseball doping ban overturned – from New Jersey to Manhattan.

Judge Faith Hochberg in a 14-page opinion declined to dismiss the case but said it should be heard in Manhattan federal court rather than in New Jersey, where Kerik now lives and wanted it to take place.

“This matter involves New York City’s former police commissioner and a New York attorney, and, thus, should be decided in New York,” wrote Hochberg.

The suit, filed in January, claims Tacopina knowingly allowed Kerik to perjure himself in a Bronx guilty plea and also gave the feds privileged information to his then-client in 2007.

Tacopina responded days later by slapping Kerik and the Daily News with a $15 million defamation suit in Manhattan federal court, claiming the convicted felon and ex-top cop fed outrageous “lies” about him to two sports reporters for a December “hit piece.” Tacopina claims the reporters hoped to discredit him because they were pursuing a crusade against Rodriguez and were “obsessed with ridding the sports world of performance enhancing drugs.”

Reps for the Daily News have vehemently denied the allegations.

Tacopina once represented Kerik, who was released in 2012 after three years in federal prison. Kerik had plead to eight felonies, including tax fraud and lying to the White House while being vetted for the Homeland Security Secretary post.