Paul Molé’s Legal Nightmare Endangers 110 Years Of UES History

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A series of bitter lawsuits by two former lovers have embroiled the famous barbershop Paul Molé, which floats in limbo after a recent eviction from its Upper East Side home, court records show.

Ownership of the elite East 74th Street barbershop — Tom Hanks came in a week before it shuttered and President Donald Trump trusted its barbers with his bald spot — is the subject of protracted litigation between proprietor Adrian Wood and former partner Susan Rooney, according to civil court documents.

Accusations hurled in hundreds of court records include book-cooking claims, encounters with knives, antisemitic statements and one litigant forcing the other to watch the History Channel.

“She has basically run the business into the ground,” Wood said in a court proceeding.

“You have not only lost your touch as a Barber," Rooney told Wood in a 2021 text message, "but as a decent human being as well."

Arguments over who can work in the Lexington Avenue barbershop and who owns the iconic name stem from an agreement made between the partners, both romantic and professional at the time, in 2012.

Rooney, a successful fashion production manager from The Bronx, says she bought 80 percent of the business when she invested $100,000 and secured similar funding from her contractor brother to move into a new space where Paul Molé’s name hangs today.

According to Rooney, she agreed to take over day-to-day operations while Wood focused on customers. In an 2013 affidavit from a divorce proceeding, even Wood admits Rooney saved Paul Molé.

“If it were not for Susan’s efforts, there would be no business at all,” Wood wrote.

But Wood now claims the deal was a sham because Rooney undervalued the worth of the business in their shareholder agreement, trial transcripts show.

Wood said he began asking Rooney for more information about the Paul Molé finances a few years ago and her refusal led to a collapse of their relationship.

This is when the accusations start to get personal.

Wood claims Rooney threatened him with a kitchen knife in their East 70th Street apartment (her lawyers deny this) and said she'd use the “Dark Web” against her former “Honey Bunny” by releasing private information, according to court documents.

Meanwhile Rooney says Wood is a “jilted lover” seeking revenge and that he promised to make her life a “misery” if she didn’t agree to a new stock arrangement and a $1 million pay-off scheme.

Rooney also echoes past accusations that Wood made racist and antisemitic comments in the barbershop, court transcripts and submitted affidavits show.

“I've been emotionally abused and mentally abused by him for ten years,” Rooney said during a cross examination. “He makes me watch the history channel. He is a Hitler worshiper. He is antisemitic.”

Former Paul Molé barbers, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Wood regularly made antisemitic and racial comments in the shop. One said he also witnessed an encounter detailed in a Rooney affidavit when Wood yelled at a Jewish employee about to grab a tool from Wood’s toolbox.

“No f---ing Jew is allowed to touch my tools,” Wood said, according to the affidavit.

Such claims also appear in a 2017 Daily News report about three barbers who left Paul Molé to set up their own shop on Lexington Avenue and cited Wood’s antisemitic comments as a factor.

But Wood’s lawyer, Peter Wessel, contested Rooney's account.

“Ms. Rooney has polluted the record with a litany of false, often sensational allegations – made by both herself and other, now-former Paul Molé employees who have aligned with her,” Wessel said.

Wessel argued Rooney's aim was, "to distract from the fundamental weakness of her claims, as well as her flagrant disobedience of the Court’s directives."

As tensions mounted between the exes, negotiations over a new lease split Paul Molé apart this year, with Wood claiming rights to the Lexington Avenue location and Rooney claiming rights to the name.

Paul Molé was ultimately evicted in late January by a landlord who said Rooney demanded a well-below market price and failed to pay $400,000 in back rent, according to a separate landlord lawsuit.

Wood secured a new lease last month in a deal that bars Rooney from conducting business on the premises, court records show.

A sign posted outside the iconic shop alerts would-be patrons the barbershop was temporarily closed but promises Wood's imminent return.

"Adrian, who has owned the shop for 50 years is taking back full control," the sign reads. "The shop is once again family owned and operated."

Unsurprisingly, Rooney's attorneys challenge the deal and say it was based on falsehood.

“He worked with the landlord and made many misrepresentations to oust her from the property,” one of Rooney’s lawyers, Bryan Goldstein, told Patch.

Rooney's lawyers also argued that while Wood is free to operate a barber shop, it can’t be called Paul Molé, since Wood only owns 20 percent of the name.

And so Paul Molé — whose workers have swept away hair snipped from the heads of John Lennon, Henry Fonda, Joe DiMaggio, John Steinbeck and Bernie Madoff since it opened in 1913 — faces an uncertain future.

As the court battle wages on, only one element of the case remains certain: its presiding judge is getting fed up with the case.

“This case has utilized disproportionate judicial resources since inception,” judge Barry Ostrager wrote in one order.

“Counsel for the parties are disserving their clients’ interests by not counseling their clients to cease escalating the personal vendetta."