Exclusive | Tribeca social club warring with residents over baseless complaints: lawsuit
A celebrity magnet Tribeca social club claims a former Merck exec and other neighbors are scheming to get it shut down by filing “baseless” complaints against it.Maxwell Social Club — where it costs $12K to join and stars such as Reese Witherspoon, Brooklyn Beckham, David Letterman, Blake Lively and Julia Fox have gone to unwind — alleges in a new lawsuit that party-pooping neighbors have lodged dozens of complaints with the city for years because they can’t tolerate the occasional noise.Owners Kyle Chaning-Pearce and David Litwak claim the alleged campaign has already cost them millions of dollars in fines, legal fees and lost business, according to court documents.Former Merck executive vice president Roger Perlmutter and his wife Joan Kreiss have been warring with their new neighbor since it opened in 2023, ratting them out to the city and the co-op board, the suit contends.But the co-op board — where Perlmutter serves as a member — has been refusing to approve repair requests made by the club for 17 months, according to court papers.“The result was a self-reinforcing scheme,” the club claimed in the lawsuit.Kreiss allegedly complained about issues related to “cooking and ductwork” at Maxwell.But the board shot down the club’s proposal for ductwork repairs in October 2024, according to the July 19 complaint filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.She also allegedly made several efforts to force Maxwell to host exclusively quiet events, including suggesting to the board that Maxwell could host “meditation sessions.”Neighbors insist that the club is the bad actor.
Maxwell had originally presented itself as a quiet, intimate venue, but the reality was the opposite, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed in October 2025 filed by the co-op for allegedly disturbing the neighborhood, seeking at least $1.5 million in damages.“Every summer weekend … a boisterous crowd would gather for an event,” according to a second-floor residen...