PR Exec Who Was Slapped By An Editor At Zac Posen SS13 Files New Charges

by Samantha Randazzo | 10:10 am, November 11th, 2012

Lynn Tesoro, the unfortunate publicist who got smacked in the face by an editor just prior to Zac Posen‘s spring 2013 show, has filed a new lawsuit against the women who attacked her.

The catfight began when a New York fire marshall made the decision to remove 60 seats from the venue, Avery Fisher Hall, shortly before the show was set to begin. This left Tesoro and her PR firm, HL Group, with the daunting (and political) task of reseating people. Enter Marie-José Susskind-Jalou, president of Jalou publishing house, and her daughters, Jennifer Eyemere and Vanessa Bellugeon, both of L’Official and Jalouse magazines. The account of in the incident that’s in the lawsuit says that when Tesoro calmly explained what had happened, the three defendants “refused to listen to reason and continued to berate [Tesoro in a] loud and offensive manner”. However, the conversation ended shortly thereafter when one of the three women slapped Tesoro across the face.

Previously, Eyemere had taken credit for the attack in the press. She told WWD that she was upset about the manner in which Tesoro was treating her mother, and so she slapped her:

“I said, ‘Don’t speak to my mom like this. You have to stop to speak like that.’ I said, ‘Be careful, I am going to slap you,’ and she kept doing it, and it just happened. … It was a small slap. It was not strong. I didn’t hurt her, it was just to humiliate her. She humiliated my mom, and I humiliated her in front of her crew. Voilà. I just said at the end, ‘Now you know you don’t f–k with French people.’”

Now here’s where it gets a little strange. Tesoro filed a $1 million lawsuit against Eyemere shortly after the incident occurred, but on Thursday she filed new charges against all three women — Susskind-Jalou is being charged with battery, Eyemere with libel, and the trio, including Bellugeon, with assault and slander — and it appears that it was actually Susskind-Jalou who slapped her. At any rate, this is what Tesoro’s lawyers had to say in response to Eyemere’s account of the incident, which has been cited in the suit:

“Such statements falsely indicated that Tesoro deserved to be slapped because she verbally ‘humiliated’ Susskind-Jalou, when the exact opposite is true.”

Yikes. Tesoro is seeking unspecified damages, and something tells us she’s going to win this one. The moral of the story: Let’s all try to be a little kinder during Fashion Week, shall we?

[WWD]

Legal Issues Lynn Tesoro NYFW Spring 2013 Zac Posen

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