A Manhattan translation company honcho says his ex-fiance spells trouble in any language.
Philip Shawe, co-founder of the $400 million TransPerfect Global Inc. — one of the largest translation companies in the world — filed court papers seeking an emergency order of protection from his former girlfriend and business partner who he alleges attacked him in their Park Avenue office last week.
But a civil court judge denied the order after both sides claimed they were the victims.
“If either party is in fear of their safety the remedy is go to the police or criminal court,” Justice Debra James said on Tuesday.
In his court papers, Shawe says TransPerfect co-founder Elizabeth Elting repeatedly spiked his right ankle with her pointy pumps, drawing blood, causing swelling and a nasty bruise, according to Manhattan Supreme Court filing.
Shawe, 44, adds that Elting, 48, whom he met when they attended NYU’s prestigious Stern School of Business in the 1990s, “appears to be so unstable as of late that I do not know what she is physically capable of.”
“It has become clear to me that my personal safety is now at stake,” he says in court papers filed Tuesday.
The svelte Elting lashed out against Shawe on June 10 when he came to her office at their company TransPerfect’s Park Avenue headquarters to ask about a $450,000 withdrawal from their corporate account that he said was unauthorized, the filing says.
“She made aggressive comments, jumped up from behind her desk, raced across the room, came at me, intentionally pushing and shoving me into the wall,” Shawe recounts in the filing.
She made aggressive comments, jumped up from behind her desk, raced across the room, came at me, intentionally pushing and shoving me into the wall.
- Philip Shawe
She then “kicked me very hard twice on the right leg with dress shoes that were pointed at the toe,” the court papers note.
But Etling’s attorney, Ronald Greenberg, said Shawe was to blame for the confrontation.
“She’s a 100-pound woman. She’s the victim,” Greenberg huffed in the emergency hearing, noting that Shawe has a restraining order against him by another TransPerfect employee.
“He menaced her in her door,” Greenberg said.
The two were fighting over whether their company would pay their individual taxes when Shawe caught his leg in the door, Greenberg told the judge.
They started the business in an NYU dorm room 22 years ago. It now has 3,000 employees and raked in $400 million in revenue last year.