Chef’s Lawsuit Against a Former Assistant Is Settled Out of Court
Pete Wells
The owner and chef of a Greenwich Village seafood restaurant has settled the lawsuit she brought against her former sous-chef after he opened a restaurant that she said was a “total plagiarism” of her own.
The chef, Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar, had accused her former assistant, Edward McFarland, of copying “each and every element” of her restaurant, including the white marble bar, the color scheme and the Caesar salad recipe when he and his partners opened Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo.
Both sides in the case agreed to keep the terms of the settlement confidential.
The case, brought last June, was avidly followed in the hospitality business because it cited principles of intellectual property law, including trade secrets and trade dress — the kind of tactic more commonly used by large corporations than by restaurants like Pearl, a tiny storefront on Cornelia Street known for urbane takes on lobster rolls, chowder and other New England clam-shack standbys.
The suit had demanded that Ed’s Lobster Bar, at 222 Lafayette Street, stop using visual elements that Ms. Charles claimed were copied from Pearl. On a visit Friday afternoon, though, Ed’s Lobster Bar looked much the same as it had last June, except for several small details of décor that were singled out in the complaint as being virtually identical to those at Pearl. The wainscoting on the walls, once gray, and the stained-wood backs on the chairs and bar stools are now painted white.
According to Mr. McFarland, the place had been spruced up while he was on his honeymoon in February. A partner, Andrew Rasiej, said, “We wanted to make it a little more bright, a little more inviting.”
A few weeks after the repainting, Ed’s Lobster Bar had new menus printed, introducing several new dishes and changing the names of others. The lawsuit had charged that Ed’s menu consisted “almost entirely of dishes created by Charles.”
Now the Lobster Bar’s bouillabaisse, an item long offered at Pearl, is called “New York Shellfish Stew.”
But “Ed’s Caesar” is still there. Ms. Charles had been particularly indignant about it, claiming that Mr. McFarland had stolen a recipe passed down to her by her mother. Distinctively, it is made with English-muffin croutons and a coddled egg.
“When I taught him, I said, ‘You will never make this anywhere else,’ ” Ms. Charles said last summer.
The croutons on Ed’s Caesar are, to all appearances, still made from English muffins, although Mr. McFarland and Mr. Rasiej would not say whether that was so.
Mr. McFarland said he felt “fantastic” about the settlement and was looking forward to opening new branches of Ed’s in other New York neighborhoods.
Ms. Charles said she had been living in Maine since March, taking care of her mother, who was ill. As a result, she welcomed the chance to settle the lawsuit, although she was sorry she had not been able to set a legal precedent.
“I still feel strongly that I did the right thing,” she said in a telephone interview. “
I think it’s important to our industry to find some way to help chefs protect what they create.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/nyregion/19suit.html