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Illusiuonist David Copperfield has allowed his multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment “devolve into a state of… dilapidation” so severe, architects warned it could actually threaten the structural integrity of the entire building.
That’s according to an eye-popping lawsuit filed Tuesday by board of The Galleria, a condo on East 57th Street, which accuses the 67-year-old Copperfield — the world’s highest-paid magician — of causing some $3 million worth of damage not only to his own “formerly pristine multilevel penthouse,” but to other tenants’ homes.
Copperfield “trashed” the place, which he no longer occupies but still owns, leaving it in “appalling” condition, the complaint states. His motivation to destroy his own apartment and permit it to decay “is entirely unclear, especially when he still owns the Unit and is marketing it for sale,” says the complaint.
While the situation has spawned potential health hazards along with the physical decay, the complaint contends Copperfield “refuses to confront the consequences of his actions and denies all responsibility for the damage he has caused to the building and his former neighbors.”
Joshua Stricoff, the attorney who brought the lawsuit on behalf of The Galleria, told The Independent he didn’t have anything to add that wasn’t already in the complaint, and the allegations and photographs of the wrecked unit included in court filings required no further explanation.
In an email sent after this article was published, a representative for Copperfield said, “This is a simple insurance claim. The photographs included in the lawsuit don’t reflect the current state of the apartment. This is a court matter and will be handled in court.”
Copperfield, born David Kotkin in Metuchen, New Jersey, began performing at age 12 under the name “Davino, the Boy Magician.” In the years since, Copperfield has won 21 Emmy Awards, was named a King of Magic by the Society of American Magicians, and was given the Living Legend Award by the Library of Congress.
He owns 11 private islands, and his face appears on postage stamps issued by nations including Guyana, Dominica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Copperfield was also recently accused of sexual assault, an allegation he strongly denied, and has been linked to late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Copperfield’s 15,000 square-foot quadruplex, which sits atop the building’s 54th floor and includes an indoor pool, comprises two penthouses originally combined in the mid-1970s into a single “dreamhouse” by General Motors heir Stewart Rawlings Mott. In 1991, The Galleria found itself in the news when Eric Clapton’s 4-year-old son fell to his death from an open window on the 53rd floor.
Copperfield bought the unit in 1997 for $7.4 million, according to the complaint, which says the residence is so large, it is serviced by its own dedicated heating, ventilation, electrical and hot water systems. Because the equipment is not used by any other tenants, the complaint says the condo bylaws place responsibility for its upkeep and repair on the apartment’s owner.
Copperfield’s presence in the building, from the start, has been “tumultuous,” the complaint continues, calling him a “far cry from a model resident.” Upon taking possession of the massive penthouse, the complaint says Copperfield “notoriously jam packed the Unit with novelties such as fortune telling machines, classic arcade games and other, more bizarre items like ‘hazing devices’ apparently used by various fraternities during the turn of the century.”
The problems Copperfield later unleashed have been “a significant and ongoing issue — much publicized in Page Six and elsewhere — for quite some time,” according to the complaint.
In 2009, it says Copperfield’s private elevator incurred a violation with the New York City Department of Buildings, costing the condominium board an unspecified amount in penalties and fines.
In 2015, Copperfield’s indoor pool burst, which the complaint claims happened due to the magician’s use of “illegal and ineffective plastic plumbing fixtures.” Water cascaded down throughout the building, damaging elevators and apartments as far as 30 stories below, according to the complaint.
In 2017, Copperfield “yet again brought the Condominium to the brink of litigation” over required window repairs he simply ignored for years, the complaint alleges.
But, it says, the following year, things took a turn for the surreal.
In 2018, according to the complaint, “Copperfield abandoned the Unit, stripping it of its furniture and fixtures.”
“Since then, Copperfield has let the Unit devolve into a state of complete dilapidation,” the complaint states. “To say that he trashed the Unit is an understatement. The pictures of the Unit are appalling and speak for themselves.”
Once the condo board discovered the condition of Copperfield’s apartment, it hired an architecture firm to assess the damage, according to the complaint. The architects compiled their findings in a March 10 report that the board says “confirmed [its] worst fears.”
Between extensive water damage that threatens the concrete structure of the building itself; interior water damage has spurred mold and mildew growth so severe that it conceals the underlying issues; leaking skylights and millwork; falling debris that created an “active safety risk” to anyone entering the space; pipes on the verge of bursting; inadequate gas leak protection; shoddy electrical work not up to code, “varying levels of soiling” in the bathrooms, and “large quantities of unattended combustible materials,” the architects’ report says the apartment’s “current conditions pose potential safety and health hazards and should not remain within an occupied building.”
The condo board says it sent the architects’ report to Copperfield’s lawyer “to no avail.”
“In response, Copperfield at most caused band-aid repairs to be performed to some of the purely cosmetic issues identified by [the report],” the complaint states. “Several of the more significant and dangerous issues such as subsurface decay/damage, structural stability, and mold growth remain unaddressed.”
According to the complaint, the board learned that when Copperfield moved out in 2018, he fired his house manager, housekeeper, and handyman, who maintained the unit’s purpose-built mechanicals.
Since then, “unbeknownst to the board,” no one has looked after any of the equipment, leading to a Dec. 27, 2023, valve failure in Copperfield’s mechanical room that “completely blindsided” building management. That, the complaint states, caused flooding throughout various apartments, elevator shafts, hallways and beyond, requiring an estimated $3 million in repairs.
Copperfield and his insurer told the condo board that he and his staff were unaware of the mechanical room or their obligation to maintain it, a claim the complaint dismisses as fiction, as they had taken care of those duties for years previously.
The board still does not know the full extent of the damage it says Copperfield caused, but believes the “level of decay that Copperfield has permitted to occur in his Unit has likely penetrated to a subsurface level.” It continues to discover additional damage, and says it its complaint that it “reserves all rights” to amend the filing to include “newly estimated repair costs arising from Copperfield’s destruction of his Unit and wanton disregard of his duty of care to the Condominium, the terms of the Condominium’s governing documents, and basic decency.”
In short, the complaint concludes, “Copperfield must be held accountable for his misconduct.”
The condo board is demanding a total of $7.5 million, plus yet-to-be-determined punitive damages and legal fees.
