GROWN WORTHY EXCUSE
Suit-dodge bid
But she’s an adult! That’s the excuse the deeppocketed parents of a troubled 35yearold socialite are using to try to duck a lawsuit by her former sobriety coach, whom the woman allegedly shoved down a flight of stairs.
Realestate mogul Larry Wohl and his wife, Denise, say sobriety coach Heather McKean’s suit “fails to cite any onpoint case law holding a defendant liable for the negligent security or supervision of their adult child.”
The parents’ argument comes despite the fact that they hired McKean, 39, for their daughter, Joselyn — and used their $4 million Southampton mansion for her sessions.
“Whether she was an adult or not doesn’t allow someone to attack another person and injure them forever,” McKean’s lawyer, Bryan Swerling, told The Post. “They hired my client and put her in harm’s way knowing that Ms. Wohl had a propensity for violence.”
The incident allegedly occurred in March 2012 at the family’s Suffolk County home. Joselyn, who suffers from substance abuse and schizophrenia, was essentially under the care of McKean at the time, her parents’ lawyer says.
“It can be more convincingly argued that Joselyn was under the direct care, custody and supervision of plaintiff, her life coach,” Wohl lawyer Richard Freire says in the recently filed Manhattan court papers.
The attack was allegedly so severe, McKean had to undergo spinalfusion surgery and at least four other procedures, and the injuries have allegedly led to the end of her second career as a photographer.
“Joselyn yanked her down a flight of [concrete] stairs, then was on top of her choking her,” Swerling said.
The Wohls are already facing a second suit by another life coach after Joselyn allegedly stabbed the man with a fork just six months following the claimed attack on McKean.
Larry Wohl’s company, J.P. Day, owns more than a dozen office buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The family’s Park Avenue apartment is currently on the market for $18 million.