The Obama administration has had a tough time fighting the War on Leaks. From Bradley Manning's arrest in the WikiLeaks controversial to the successful subpoenaing of Twitter, critics have heralded the Presidency as one of the most anti-leak executive reigns in recent history.More >>

Yesterday DNAinfo reported that the December 14 death of Young & Rubicam executive Suzanne Hart in an elevator at 285 Madison Avenue might have been prevented "if elevator repairmen had not violated city rules by rushing the lift back into service without the required O.K. from the Department of Buildings." According to sources, Transel Elevator Inc. did not follow through with the mandatory notification to the DOB following their work on the elevator -- that notification would have led to an independent inspection of the elevator, and, presumably, could have caught the glitch that led to Hart's death before the elevator was boarded by passengers.

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Following up on the elevator tragedy that caused the death of Suzanne Hart, a Y&R ad executive working at 285 Madison Avenue, the New York Post reports that Transel, the elevator maintenance company responsible for the elevator (work was reportedly done hours before the accident that killed Hart), has been sued at least eight times from people who say they were injured in its various -- some 2,500 in the city -- elevators.

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Last year around this time, under very different weather circumstances than we're having right now, hundreds of people were stuck on an A train in the Rockaways from approximately 10 p.m. on December 26 until 8 a.m. on December 27. This was during the blizzard of 2010, which most of us probably haven't thought much about since our streets were plowed last January -- although this year, in early December, the MTA finally admitted they'd forgotten about those unfortunate passengers, calling the omission "inexcusable."

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the event, and Aymen Aboushi, lawyer for 22 plaintiffs who were stuck on that train, will be filing a complaint with the New York City Transit Authority on their behalf. Aboushi says the MTA's recent admission of fault, which followed numerous meetings between the plaintiffs and the MTA over the past year in which plaintiffs told their stories of the incident, "does not give us what we are looking for because it is simply an admission of liability, not a remedy."

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Esther Zuckerman

A few days ago we got a curious email from Olek, the crochet artist who has covered much of New York in colorful yarn. She's been in Europe for a while and did a couple shows in Poland recently.

"I hope you will have a great Holiday season this year," Olek wrote. "I will be spending it in the Crown Court in London fighting for my freedom."

We read on and clicked the link that Olek provided to her new website. This is the statement that was approved by her lawyer:

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Just before Thanksgiving, Manhattan Judge Alice Schlesinger ruled that the Bloomberg administration turn over emails sent between the mayor and Cathie Black prior to Black's short-lived appointment as New York City schools chancellor. (The fight for the emails had been instigated by Sergio Hernandez, former Village Voice intern, under the Freedom of Information law back in May of last year.) Hernandez had expected the release of the emails tomorrow -- however, he tells us that the Bloomberg administration has decided to appeal and will not produce the information as expected.

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Makhnevich

There's an interesting case in the news today involving New York dentist Stacy Makhnevich, who is facing a class-action lawsuit from Robert Lee, a former patient. Makhnevich, who calls herself "the Classical Singer Dentist of New York," treated Lee for a toothache, but not before he signed a contract promising not to say anything bad about her online -- he claims he was in such pain he signed it in "a situation of duress" to get the treatment. Later, however, after he says she overcharged him $4,000, sent his records to the wrong insurance company, and refused to provide copies of records so he could submit them himself, he shared that wrongdoing on various sites, including Yelp. Makhnevich turned around and accused Lee of breaching the contract he'd signed and threatened to sue him.

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Ever popular for its philosophy of affordability, if not for the crowding that can happen in its free-yoga-love studios, Yoga to the People is being sued by a powerful enemy, yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, the man behind -- obviously -- Bikram yoga. Bikram, if you don't know yoga, is a 90-minute program featuring 26 poses done in a 105-degree room (tagline: "authentic hot yoga that's changing lives all over the world.") Certainly, it is making people sweat a lot more than they would otherwise. The trouble, according to Choudhury's lawyer, Robert Gilchrest, is that Yoga to the People's founder Gregory Gumucio ripped off Choudhury's yoga moves which, in fact, Choudhury has copyrighted, for a Yoga to the People class called "Traditional Hot Yoga." YOGA BEEF!

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Cash, money, gavel.

Anthony McCord, a 29-year-old pimp who's on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court for rape and robbery has been denied his request to be qualified as an "expert witness" in pimping. McCord is acting as his own lawyer and had hoped to reveal to jurors the "relationships between pimps and hookers, so they could better evaluate the case." His qualifications for expert pimp-dom, via the Daily News:

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C.S. Muncy

One of the more recent instances of alleged police brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters involves Felix Rivera-Pitre, who was allegedly punched by a police officer identified as Deputy Inspector Johnny Cardona last week after the movement won the right to stay in Zuccotti Park. Various witnesses say he was unprovoked; the NYPD's position is that Rivera-Pitre attempted to elbow Cardona in the face. Rivera-Pitre's lawyer, Ron Kuby, says, "We deny that. There's no video, there are no photographs of that. But, even so, Cardona was not making an arrest; he was beating somebody up. Sucker-punching someone in the jaw is not a means of making that arrest. He should be arrested for that, but the police don't want to."

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