Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll look at a small Manhattan fish market whose owner says the supermarket chain Wegmans copied his operation at a new store nearby. We'll also get details on developments in some of the cases involving Donald Trump.
Sakanaya, in the Wegmans supermarket on Astor Place, says it is "a fish market unlike any other." Yuji Haraguchi disagrees, saying it is a fish market like his, Osakana, a few blocks away. Last month he took Wegmans and several smaller food-related companies to court, accusing them of pirating his concepts. Wegmans said his lawsuit was "without merit," and now the other defendants in his lawsuit have countersued him. Haraguchi's lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said that Sakanaya had "an uncanny and confusingly similar resemblance" to his store: Osakana means "fish" in Japanese, and Sakanaya means "fish shop." Even the typography on Sakanaya's signs was the same as on Osakana's, the lawsuit said. "A lot of people thought that was me" when Sakanaya opened because "the name was so close," he told me. Haraguchi said in a petition on the website change.org that he had not known Sakanaya was coming. He found out when someone sent him a message that said: "Congratulations on opening Osakana in Wegman." "That's how I found out they secretly opened the identical concept called 'Sakanaya' behind my back," he wrote in the petition, which had just over 4,700 signatures on Monday. He told me that his sales had gone down 30 percent once the Wegmans store opened. His lawsuit accused Wegmans and the other companies of creating Sakanaya together and having a "plan to scam" him after he decided to sell Osakana last year. His lawsuit said that in August of last year, he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Culinary Collaborations, a seafood supplier that Haraguchi said was Wegmans's fish broker. "I trusted Wegman's recognition, presence and credibility," Haraguchi said in the petition. "Without a doubt, I believed that I could grow Osakana with them even better and stronger." But — according to the countersuit — Culinary Collaborations decided it was not interested and in September "passed the opportunity" on to Red Shell Sushi, a California-based supplier. "In order to keep the scam going and not raise any questions," Haraguchi's lawsuit said, in November Red Shell Sushi asked Haraguchi to prepare a draft purchase agreement for Osakana. A week later, Culimer USA, a food marketing and distribution firm that had also been involved in the talks for Osakana, "summarily decided it was no longer interested in purchasing Osakana," according to the Haraguchi lawsuit. The Wegmans store, with Sakanaya inside, opened in October.
"They never disclosed they were opening in direct competition against my store," Haraguchi said. "If they had told me they were doing it, I would never have accepted their letter of intent." A lawyer for the companies named in Haraguchi's lawsuit, other than Wegmans, called his allegations "baseless and retaliatory." The lawyer, B. Kevin Burke Jr., said in a statement that the lawsuit was "nothing more than an attempt by Mr. Haraguchi to unjustly enrich himself by smearing the defendants in the media and online, hoping to force a settlement." Their countersuit accused Haraguchi of "online tirades" on Instagram and change.org that falsely accused Wegmans and the other companies of fraud, trademark infringement and unfair competition. The countersuit also presented different details about the discussions for the sale of Osakana, including that it was Haraguchi who walked away from the deal to sell, not Red Shell Sushi. A spokeswoman for Wegmans, which is not a plaintiff in the countersuit, said by email that the company was "confident" that Haraguchi's original lawsuit was "without merit." She said that Wegmans had worked with Uoriki, a high-end fishmonger and retailer in Tokyo that is a defendant in Haraguchi's suit and a plaintiff in the countersuit, beginning in 2022. Wegmans finalized the supply-chain and training plans for Sakanaya last June, she said.
WEATHER Expect a sunny day with temperatures reaching the low 60s. At night, temperatures will drop to the mid-40s with a partly cloudy sky. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until March 24 (Purim). The latest New York news
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A whirl of statements and legal maneuvering around different courts in Manhattan on Monday reflected Donald Trump's continuing entanglements.
Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, raised the possibility of a new lawsuit after he lashed out at Carroll over the weekend and on Monday, using the same kind of derogatory language that in January led to a defamation verdict and an $83.3 million judgment in the first case Carroll filed. Trump complained on Saturday about the bond he had to post to prevent Carroll from collecting the $83.3 million while he appealed the verdict, telling the crowd at a rally in Rome, Ga., that Carroll was "not a believable person." Then, on CNBC on Monday, he mockingly referred to Carroll as "Ms. Bergdorf Goodman" — a reference to the department store where Carroll said he had attacked her, an encounter that figured in a related case last year. The jury in that case ordered him to pay her $5.5 million. Trump said on CNBC that the decisions against him were "ridiculous." "I got charged — I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation," said Trump, who in fact did not face criminal charges in the case. The $91 million was a reference to the bond for the $83.3 million judgment, plus interest. METROPOLITAN DIARY 'Gigantor'
Dear Diary: I jumped into a cab on Park Avenue South in the 30s on a dreary, gray Thursday. The driver was friendly, and we started talking about the lack of snow in New York City. Somehow the conversation turned to an old "Twilight Zone" episode. Realizing that we were of the same vintage, the cabby asked if I knew who Gigantor was. Did I know who Gigantor was? "Gigantor, Gigantor, Gigaaaantooor, Gigantor the space-age robot," I sang. "He is at your command." As we went up Park Avenue, we broke into another one: "Come and listen to the story 'bout a man named Jed, a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed … " Turning left onto 57th Street, we shifted gears again. "Meet George Jetson," we sang, "his boy, Elroy; daughter, Judy; Jane, his wife." Circling around Columbus Circle, we moved onto the 1970s and Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." The trip ended all too soon. I thanked the driver for a fun ride and popped out of the cab. I'm sorry I didn't ask for his name. But if he's out there reading, I've got one more: "Take our advice. At any price, a gorilla like Magilla is very nice. Magilla Gorilla for sale!" — Marjorie Silverman Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Sofia Poznansky and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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N.Y. Today: A merchant sues Wegmans
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