Legal Fight Over Famed UES Comedy Club Gets Uglier: Reports

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The legal fight between two owners of a famed Upper East Side comedy club is growing uglier, with one of the partners accusing the others of using the club as a personal bar and turning a blind eye to deteriorating conditions in a new lawsuit.

Tess Wachs, the widow of Comic Strip Live founder Robert Wachs, filed a lawsuit against the club's co-owner Richard Tienken and his wife Jean in Manhattan Supreme Court demanding damages and the right to take over club operations, the New York Post first reported. Tienken previously sued Wachs in 2017 for attempting to interfere in the running of the club after she inherited 50 percent of the Comic Strip Live after her husband's death.

The new lawsuit claims that Tienken and his wife have turned the club where Jerry Seinfeld got his break — and returned to for his recent Netflix special "Jerry Before Seinfeld" — into a dump where "dead rats and mice [are] left for weeks on the premises," according to the Post.

The widow also claims the once-prominent club suffers from problems such as decrepit carpeting, bathrooms with holes in the floor and a foul odor that occupies the entire business, the Daily News Reported. Tienken refuted these claims in an interview with the News.

"The fact that she said it’s rat-infested — I have an A from the Health Department!" Tienken told the Daily News.

Tienken also told the Daily News that the Comic Strip Live was essentially broke, which means Wachs owns "50 percent of nothing." A dispute with the club's third co-founder John McGown and the proliferation of comedy clubs in New York City has put a drain on the Upper East Side institution's earnings, the Post reported.

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