Court throws the high heat
THE longtime partner of Yankee legend and YES Network commentator David Cone has been ordered to pay the legal bills of a neighbor who accused her of setting fire to her home for fame.
Taja Abitbol is at the center of an ongoing lawsuit in which neighbor David Rice claimed she tried to burn down her Manhattan apartment in 2019 to land a gig on “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Abitbol denied this and responded by suing Rice for defamation.
But on July 9, a New York Supreme Court judge dismissed Abitbol’s case and ruled that she must pay all of Rice’s legal fees.
The ruling states that “there is ample evidence of Plaintiff attempting to gain notoriety from the fire,” reports The Post’s Sara Nathan, including talking about it on Tamron Hall’s show the day after the incident. The judge also notes that Abitbol “was ‘obsessed’ ” with getting cast on “RHONY” and “had apparently failed four auditions.”
As Abitbol previously told The Post, on the morning of Nov. 9, 2019, she lit a sage meditation candle in the dining room of her and Cone’s four-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Square. The candle went up in flames, setting off the building’s sprinklers.
Rice, who lives downstairs, claimed in his lawsuit that Abitbol and Cone “caused the fire . . . in order for Abitbol to have a story” to tell Hall. (The FDNY ruled the fire an accident.)
It also claimed water sprinklers forced Rice to carry out a “gut renovation” of his apartment, and he requested $320,000 in damages.
Abitbol — who splits her time between Miami, where she runs her wellness center, Taja Drip, and NYC, where she lives with Cone and their 12-year-old son, Sammy — has filed an appeal. We’re told she’s also suing the building for failing to control its sprinklers and the manufacturers of the candle.