A Tudor City resident has accused the apartment complex’s board of heartlessly trying to kick out his girlfriend — because she’s mentally ill.
Frank Mazzocchi, 77, says his longtime girlfriend was simply a friendly eccentric who liked to feed birds and squirrels while sitting with her bulldog and chatting with passers-by on the co-op’s quiet cul-de-sac above First Avenue.
But in 2006, Mazzocchi claims in a lawsuit, the co-op board tried to clean up the complex’s image.
“Most of the board members were heavily invested in apartments in the building . . . and therefore had a personal interest” in cracking down on “appearances and activities they found undesirable,” Mazzocchi alleges in the papers, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
As a result, Mazzochi’s 51-year-old girlfriend, who has lived in the building with him since 1991, was repeatedly ordered to stay inside, he charges. She is identified only as “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit.
“They decided they were going to make it like Park Avenue and started a reign of oppression,” said Mazzocchi, who moved to his Tudor City studio in 1977. “They started to enforce all kinds of picayune rules and regulations.”
The co-op tried to oust the couple in 2011, claiming in a lawsuit that Mazzocchi was illegally subletting to his girlfriend. The case was dropped in March.
Mazzocchi, a Brooklyn landlord, has hit back in federal court, claiming that his girlfriend is mentally ill and that Tudor City was discriminating against her. That case is on hold.
In the new lawsuit filed last week, Mazzocchi claims the building’s eviction efforts and cruel controlling led to his love’s worsening condition.
“As they decreased her activities, she got more and more off the wall,” he said. “It’s pretty much full blown at this point.”
The woman refuses to accept a bipolar diagnosis and won’t take medication, says Mazzocchi, who supports her financially.
But the illness is undeniable, Mazzocchi says in court papers, noting she once allowed a crooked storefront dentist to violently pull all of her teeth without anesthetic — leaving her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mazzocchi’s attorney, Jeff Brown, said the woman’s biggest crime was not conforming.
“She’s never hurt anyone. She’s accused of being a little eccentric,” he said.
Mazzocchi, refuses to walk away from the woman who once cared for his ailing parents.
“I don’t thinks she deserves being abandoned,” he said. “What would she do? She’ll end up on a street corner in Manhattan.”
Mazzocchi is suing the building, the co-op board and Thomas Curtis, a former Tudor City lawyer who initially oversaw efforts to evict him. He is seeking unspecified damages.
Curtis called Mazzocchi’s claims “exaggerated” and “meritless.”
“The board was dead to rights to try to evict her,” he recalled.
Curtis said the girlfriend was accused of exposing herself in front of the building and her dog was accused of biting a resident. Mazzocchi denies those charges.
A lawyer for Tudor City did not respond to messages seeking comment.