Author Continues Tiff With Night Club

BRONX (CN) - Urban fiction author Teri Woods says Greenhouse nightclub managers defamed her when they called her racial discrimination lawsuit a "publicity stunt." Woods' new complaint, in Bronx County Court, follows a 2009 class action in which Woods claims the club prohibited guests, including her daughter, from attending a party celebrating the release of Wood's new novel.

Woods and her guests demanded $1 billion in damages in last year's class action.

At the time, the club's attorneys said that Woods' guest list had more than 100 more guests than she predicted. The attorneys added that they were considering pursuing criminal charges against Woods for allegedly extorting one of the co-owners in a text message, The Daily News reported last year.

In her new filing, Woods sued the club and its co-owners, John Bakhshi and Barry Mullineaux, alleging the same claims as in the original class action, along with new libel and slander claims.

Woods owns two film production companies and two publishing companies, which printed her 18 novels (including her most famous book, "True to the Game").

The book release party was slated for Aug. 6, 2009. Woods says that she hired DJ Suss-one to play at the club. She says her guest list included more than 175 people, most of whom were black, and many of whom "traveled great distances to attend this event."

Woods says her daughter was denied entry, as were reporters from The New York Times, Huffington Post, Daily News and Media Bistro.

While they were shut out, she says, many white patrons were allowed into the "un-crowded" club.

Woods says she spent nearly two hours trying to persuade management to let her guests enter, and while they were outside, her guests endured "various racially offensive remarks, slurs and innuendo" and watched "a stream of white patrons allowed in."

Eventually, she says, she was "forced to abandon" the book release party.

Woods and her guests filed a class action against Greenhouse, Bakhshi and Mullineaux on Oct. 6, 2009.

After that claim, Woods says, Greenhouse defamed her in a "Press Conference Fact Sheet," which stated, "This is not an issue of race, but merely a publicity stunt on the part of Ms. Woods." She says the club made the same statements at a press conference, adding slander to libel.

She seeks damages for lost book sales, loss of publicity, future books and movies, humiliation and loss of reputation.

She is represented by John Nonnenmacher with Bader Yakaitis & Nonnenmacher.

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