John's Pizzeria family to go to court over their empire
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, March 9, 2016, 7:05 PM
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Williams, BuddA judge gave Peter Castellotti — the 49-year-old son of late John’s Pizzeria matriarch Madeline Castellotti — the OK to go forward with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his 48-year-old sister Lisa Free.
The fight over the John’s Pizzeria empire is giving new meaning to family style.
On Tuesday, a New York appellate court judge gave Peter Castellotti — the 49-year-old son of late John’s Pizzeria matriarch Madeline Castellotti — the OK to go forward with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his 48-year-old sister Lisa Free.
Castellotti first alleged in 2012 that shortly before their mother’s death in 2004, Madeline removed Peter from her will and made Free the sole beneficiary of Madeline’s fortune, which included the pizza parlor. At the time, Peter was in the process of getting a divorce.
Peter and his sister allegedly agreed that she would later split the inheritance with her big brother after he settled matters with his soon-to-be ex-wife in exchange for Peter agreeing to pay his mom’s $2 million estate tax. But once Castellotti’s divorce was finished, he claims, his sister double-crossed him, slicing him out of the family fortune and keeping nearly the whole pie for herself.
A lower court tossed the case in 2014, ruling that Castellotti’s claims didn’t amount to breach of contract or fraud, as he’d alleged.
But this week, the appeals court in Manhattan gave Castellotti approval to sue his sister on the grounds of unjust enrichment and promissory estoppel. Complicating matters even further for Castellotti, the court suggested that his admission of that plot could reopen his divorce settlement, which could mean having to hand over some of his mom’s hard-earned money to his ex-wife after all.
“The defendant has engaged in a spectacular betrayal of her mother’s trust,” Jeffrey Kaplan, Castellotti’s lawyer from the law firm of Schwartz, Levine & Kaplan, tells Confidenti@l. “The court has done the right thing by giving Peter the chance to prove his case at trial.”
Free’s attorney could not be reached for comment.
The family business is still going strong. A John’s Pizzeria opened in Jersey City in 2008, followed by a Bronx shop in 2013.
The original John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker St. in the West Village continues churning out coal-fired brick oven pies the same way they’ve been doing it since 1929.
Fittingly, they practice an all-or-nothing policy of selling whole pies and no slices.
