A Manhattan judge has flunked an SAT prep king’s $14 million lawsuit against his “psychic” ex-lover.
Princeton Review co-founder Adam Robinson contended that ex-gal pal Laura Day took advantage of his “psychological infirmities” to con him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Justice Melvin Schweitzer found Robinson had only himself to blame.
“Mr. Robinson may now regret his actions in dealing with Ms. Day, but [his legal] complaint tells the story of an enamored man pleasing his lover or ex-lover,” the judge ruled.
When they met in 1994, “Robinson was a New York Times best-selling author whose books had sold millions of copies, [while] Day did not have a career or source of income, though she occasionally offered ‘intuitive’ readings to a few clients, including celebrities,” the suit said.
Their relationship soon turned romantic, and Robinson put together a book proposal on her intuitive skills.
After landing her a $250,000 advance, he turned her “virtually unusable” notes into a book called “Practical Intuition,” the suit says. She then got a $3 million advance for her next two books, which Robinson said he wrote as well.
That helped her “intuitive” consulting business take off, and she was soon raking in $300,000 a year doling out advice to bigwigs and celebs like Demi Moore and Jennifer Aniston, the suit says — but that wasn’t enough.
Robinson, 56, maintained that Day convinced him to give her half of the royalties on his own books — and later the whole thing.
Day, 52, countered that Robinson knew exactly what he was doing, and she produced e-mails he had sent her over the years.
One of the e-mails indicated he was signing over the remainder of his approximately $350,000 a year in royalties because of guilt.
The judge seemed to buy Robinson’s contention that he’s terrible with cash — in a highly unusual move, Schweitzer approved the Wharton grad’s request for a legal guardian to help him make money decisions in the case. But he found there was no evidence Day had done anything legally wrong.
Robinson is appealing the ruling.
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