A Manhattan lady has filed swimsuit in opposition to the NYPD, claiming she was wrongfully arrested after handing Woman Gaga a script at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor final yr.
Melanie Scarola, 62, was allegedly taken to a precinct and handcuffed to a pole for 3 hours earlier than lastly being launched with a desk look ticket, in response to her Manhattan Supreme Court docket lawsuit from Monday.
“The arresting paperwork are inconsistent,” and Scarola was “maliciously prosecuted,” in court docket, the swimsuit claims.
The screenwriter maintains she “lawfully conversed” with Gaga, 36, on the iconic Midtown venue in August 2021 and gave the pop celebrity her script about famend opera singer Maria Callas.
Scarola had been out strolling and had two scripts on her – together with the one referred to as “Callas” in regards to the famed American-Greek soprano – when she noticed that Gaga was performing with Tony Bennett on the historic theater.
The Golden Globe-winning “A Star is Born” actress “was the right profile for Maria Callas. That’s why she was my primary alternative,” for the function, Scarola defined in an interview with The Submit Tuesday.
“Once I noticed her I walked as much as her and stated, ‘Hello, it’s actually tough to get stuff to your workplace,” Scarola recalled. “And I've this script that I wrote about Maria Callas and also you two look precisely alike.'”
“‘I might love for you to try the script since you could be excellent for the function,'” Scarola recounted telling the Grammy-winner. “She was so good she listened to my complete pitch. And she or he was like, ‘Okay’.”
The New York Metropolis-born artist, whose actual title is Stefani Germanotta, accepted Scarola’s script, the lawsuit states.
“Mission achieved,” Scarola stated she thought to herself as she went to go away.
However when Scarola tried to get within the elevator to exit, “she was approached by a tall plain clothed Caucasian man who prevented her from leaving the constructing with none justification,” the swimsuit claims.
“Once I acquired to the elevator he trapped me within the elevator,” Scarola stated. “He stated, ‘You’re not going wherever.'”
“I began shaking,” Scarola stated. “He cornered me from the elevator into this room.”
“He was like ‘Who're you? You’re not presupposed to be giving a script to Woman Gaga,'” she recalled.
Scarola was taken to a small room and “locked in there in opposition to her will for roughly two hours,” the swimsuit claims.
Safety guards requested for her identification and photographed her “with out her permission,” the swimsuit claims.
Then cops got here and arrested Scarola, the lawsuit states, taking her to the precinct.
Scarola says the cops didn’t have possible trigger to arrest her and that the “ordeal” left her traumatized.
“There isn't a query that this ordeal has vastly affected her mentally, emotionally and
psychologically,” the swimsuit alleges.
Scarola was charged with third-degree trespassing, in response to her lawyer Ellie Silverman, who referred to as the rap unfounded as “the doorways have been open and unlocked.”
The Manhattan District Lawyer’s Workplace on Aug. 20, 2021 “indicated that the [city and the NYPD] nonetheless had not supplied the required data and moved to dismiss the case in its entirety,” the swimsuit says.
The fees in opposition to Scarola have been conditionally dismissed, the submitting claims.
“There was no possible trigger, there was no cheap suspicion,” Silverman stated. “Any cost was utterly unfounded.”
“A author in New York Metropolis providing a script to a celeb will not be a criminal offense,” she added.
Scarola is suing the town and the NYPD for unspecified damages on claims together with malicious prosecution, negligence, violation of due course of, false arrest and false imprisonment.
Silverman stated she will not be ruling out the potential of including Radio Metropolis Music Corridor as a defendant on the case ultimately after she has explored it extra.
Each the NYPD and the town Legislation Division declined to remark.
Further reporting by Tina Moore
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