A real-life “war of the Roses” is raging between two Manhattan real-estate honchos, complete with accusations of e-mail spying, corporate freeze-outs and big-money retaliation.
The family feud, being waged in both divorce and civil courts, pits Marshall Rose, of the Georgetown Company, against his soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law, former city Planning Commissioner Joseph Rose.
The Yale- and Harvard-schooled Joseph had married Marshall’s daughter, Wendi, a willowy brunette who by coincidence already shared Joseph’s last name, back in 1996.
The two had a storybook marriage at first — much like in the 1989 Michael Douglas-Kathleen Turner divorce comedy, “The War of the Roses.” There was a wedding at the sumptuous East Hampton manse of Marshall and his second wife, actress Candice Bergen. Soon followed two beautiful kids, Joseph and Wendi’s own multimillion-dollar Hamptons “cottage” and dinners on the charity circuit.
Joseph served under Mayor Rudy Giuliani from 1993 through 2001 and then went to work for Marshall’s Madison Avenue real-estate company.
According to Joseph’s Manhattan Supreme Court civil suit filed Wednesday, Marshall, 77, at first welcomed Joseph, 54, with open arms “because of [Joseph’s] noteworthy experience, exceptional credentials and comprehensive contacts in the real-estate industry.”
But in 2010, Joseph and Wendi separated, with divorce claims and counterclaims — rumored to be ugly — exchanged this year. And Marshall, the suit claims, schemed to make his son-in-law’s life a living hell.
“Rather than seeking to promote the financial interests of the company, [Marshall] Rose used the company as a vehicle to settle his own personal and familial scores” with his son-in-law, the suit says.
In the suit, Joseph says Marshall exacted retribution for Joseph leaving Wendi, freezing Joseph out of the Georgetown Company, which has had a hand in some of the city’s most iconic properties — including Frank Gehry’s InterActiveCorp building in Chelsea and the restoration of the main branch of the New York Public Library.
The father-in-law and other partners have reduced Joe’s stake in the company from 21 percent to only .01 percent, along with cutting him out of a $19.5 million Four Seasons development in Washington, DC, and yanking his private office, support staff and health insurance, Joe contends in the suit.
Marshall also “intentionally disseminated” Joseph’s personal and business e-mails “for use by Rose’s daughter and her reps in divorce-settlement negotiations,” the suit claims.
“We are saddened that Joseph Rose seeks to entangle his soon-to-be ex-father-in-law and the business that Marshall Rose built over 40 years in an unrelated divorce,” Georgetown Company spokesman Davidson Goldin responded in a statement.
Wendi’s attorney, Alton Abramowitz, told The Post, “My client would like to state clearly that this is a private matter as far as she is concerned. She and hopefully her husband are trying to do their best to bring this to a fair and amicable resolution that will protect their children and themselves.”