The gloves have come off in the court battle between the CEO of sporting-goods empire Modell’s and his brother’s widow, with the New Jersey exec calling his Upper East Side in-law a money-grubbing hypocrite.
Modell’s Sporting Goods President Mitchell Modell accused Abby Modell of having an “unquenchable thirst for cash” weeks after she filed a lawsuit against him claiming he spent $7 million in company profits on personal luxuries, including a $116,250 steak dinner.
“While [Abby] takes issue with the fact that the CEO of a sporting-goods company that sells workout gear paid $4,450 in gym memberships, she herself charged more than $200,000 for her gym memberships during the same period,” Mitchell says in papers filed in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court.
Abby, a mother of three living on East 72nd Street, inherited more than $70 million from Modell family trust funds after her husband, Michael, died of cancer in 2001.
Yet she charged $448,000 on the company’s American Express Centurion credit card for trips to Monte Carlo, the Cayman Islands, Miami and Vail, Colo., between 2003 and 2008, court papers say.
She also spent $620,000 on limos, $12,000 on tickets to sporting events and $45,000 at the members-only Core Club on East 55th Street.
The widow racked up $3.5 million in expenses over the five years despite never working for Modell’s, the suit says.
Mitchell, 59, of Alpine, NJ, accuses Abby, 58, of attacking his own extravagant spending — which resulted in an IRS audit that nixed $1.5 million in purported “business expenses” — in retaliation for cutting off her unlimited credit card.
Mitchell claims the $116,250 bill he racked up at Morton’s steakhouse was for gift cards he bought as bonuses for managers in the 2006 Christmas season.
And he says in court papers that his late brother appointed him as trustee of his estate to curb his wife’s profligate ways and notes some of her inheritance has gone to recouping losses from investing with Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff.
He also boasts in court papers of building a family trust from $44.8 million to $300 million over eight years.
“With 155 stores in nine states, Modell’s employs more than 4,000 people and generates gross revenues in excess of $600 million a year,” he says in the suit.
Abby’s attorney, Alan Kluger, declined to comment on the specific allegations.
“This matter involves sensitive and personal information, and We intend to try our case in the courts, not the media,” the lawyer said.