Comedienne Joan Rivers got the last laugh Friday in her five-year court battle with a deadbeat neighbor in her posh E. 62nd Street condo when a Manhattan judge barred the woman from entering her unit.
“All New York buildings are like all great ladies – this one unfortunately had an ugly a**hole,” said Rivers in a statement.
“It took five years but I’m so happy. I never thought the judicial system in the New York courts really worked….but we had a very smart judge,” she said.
The humorist quipped, “I just wish my bathroom scale would take a lesson from the scale of justice and come down in my favor!”
Rivers, who is president of the board at the Spencer Condominium where she rules over the eight-unit building from her $30 million penthouse, had sued Elizabeth Hazan for over $200,000 in unpaid common charges.
Hazan, a bottle-blonde socialite, had countersued Rivers for $15 million this fall, calling her a bully and claiming she locked her out of her two-room $2 million pad.
In his decision released Friday Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Anil Singh found that Hazan, who is traveling on business and primarily lives in Miami, cannot reenter the apartment until she’s coughed up the overdue fees.
Singh says in his 9-page ruling that Hazan, 41, violated the condo bylaws when she failed to make the payments.
Hazan’s attorney, Darius Marzec, said, “My clients are shocked and awed by Honorable Anil Singh’s decision that excludes them from the condo unit in the Spencer Mansion.”
He vowed to make an emergency appeal.