New York Post

JUDGE JUDY RULE$

I squeeze CBS

- By MAX JAEGER

Judge Judy laid down the law while negotiatin­g her hefty $47-million-ayear salary, she said in a newly unveiled deposition.

CBS had “no choice” but to pay the no-nonsense jurist what she wanted, lest she produce the show herself, she said.

“Their back’s to the wall,” Judy Sheindlin bragged about CBS’s bargaining position, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I can produce this show myself.”

She said she uses the threat while negotiatin­g with CBS’s president during a meal every three years, in which she hands over a list of demands, including calls for pay raises.

“We sit across the table, and I hand him the envelope and I say, ‘Don’t read it now, let’s have a nice dinner. Call me tomorrow. You want it, fine. Otherwise, I’ll produce it myself,” she testified.

One year, when then-CBS head John Nogawski brought his own envelope, she flatly told him: “This isn’t a negotiatio­n.”

The Brooklyn-born Sheindlin was testifying in a suit brought against her bosses that claims the network pays her too much.

Plaintiff Rebel Entertainm­ent is due 5 percent of the show’s net profits, because it is the successor to the talent group that originally packaged the program back in the 1990s.

The company argues it has not been paid enough, because an overcompen­sated Sheindlin (above) is eating into the show’s profits.

The tough-taking judge shot back that Rebel Entertainm­ent’s chief, Richard Lawrence, has made a mint off a show he worked very little on and walked away from decades ago.

“I haven’t seen him or heard from him in over 21 years,” she said about Lawrence. “I think I said something like for him to complain about my salary when he’s made . . . 17 million dollars . . . for what was perhaps two, three hours worth of business, that, to me, is obscene.”

Sheindlin gave the testimony last summer, but it was not made public until this month.

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