A Manhattanite shelled out big bucks to rent fashion designer Elie Tahari’s beachfront Hamptons paradise — and allegedly got a stinky, moldy, broken-down mess instead.
The three-bedroom, three-bath Sagaponack estate, which comes with its own private staircase to the ocean and a “great room” with 10-foot-tall glass doors that roll up to allow the sea breeze in, rents for $750,000 from July through Labor Day.
Tahari — whose A-list clients include Angelina Jolie, Blake Lively and Beyonce — had put the house up for sale for $45 million, before cutting the price to a measly $39 million in 2019, according to reports.
Bridget Maguire agreed to take the 4,500-square-foot home without having visited first, relying only on glossy images of the luxury space, which show a gleaming kitchen, expansive master bath, pristine pool and basketball court, said her lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey.
In a suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the renter claimed Tahari’s pool was “green with algae.” Brian RenzettiBut she arrived to find a Hamptons hell “infested with flies, mosquitoes, and various vermin,” that “reeked” of mold, urine and feces,” with a pool “green with algae,” according to a $13 million Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit Maguire filed against Tahari’s ET Crestview Leasing LLC.
On top of the stench and bugs, the air conditioning was “completely nonfunctional,” none of the bathrooms worked, the garage door was broken and some doors inside the house wouldn’t open, Maguire claims in court papers.
Even though Maguire forked over $415,000 of the costs up front, Tahari allegedly refused to help make the disgusting conditions right, Leitman Bailey said.
“They wouldn’t fix it. They wouldn’t come help … they gave her nothing,” he said. “The way the Hamptons properties usually are, they’re turnkey, you come in and everything ‘s great.”
She was forced to find and hire her own contractors and spend a whopping $150,000 to make the place livable, said the attorney, who added that Tahari’s leasing company broke tenant laws by demanding so much dough up front.
“She paid a lot of money for contractors to come fix everything, turn everything on, get everything working,” Bailey noted.
Maguire is seeking more than $13 million in damages — $10 million of which would be considered “punitive,” according to legal papers.
Tahari, who claims to have popularized the tube top, immigrated to America from Israel in the 1970s, landing in New York City with $100 in his pocket before working his way up to become a fashion industry mainstay.
Tahari and his reps did not return messages seeking comment.
