A cookbook author has taken her battle against Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld out of the kitchen and into the courtroom.
Missy Chase Lapine, author of The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals, filed suit Monday against the famous couple, seeking unspecified damages for copyright and trademark infringement.
She has accused Jessica Seinfeld, whose cookbook, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, was published a month after Lapine's, of lifting ideas from her book.
According to her lawsuit, the Seinfelds were warned before Jessica's book was published that it had many similarities to The Sneaky Chef. Both books feature strategies for secreting veggies in kids' meals in the hopes of tricking them into eating healthily.
In addition to her allegations of plagiarism, Lapine was less than amused when Jerry Seinfeld, making light of the situation in an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman in October, compared her to three-name assassins Mark David Chapman (John Lennon's killer) and James Earl Ray (Martin Luther King's killer).
"If you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins," the lawsuit quotes Seinfeld as saying.
"Mark David Chapman. And, you know, James Earl Ray. So, that's my concern."
Seinfeld also denied his wife was guilty of "vegetable plagiarism," adding that "one of the fun facts of celebrity life is wackos will wait in the woodwork to pop out at certain moments of your life to inject a little adrenaline into your life experience."
In her court documents, Lapine claims she was cruelly defamed by the comic, alleging that any reasonable person who caught Seinfeld's appearance with Letterman would conclude that she was capable of "potentially violent or, at a minimum, hostile, tendencies, proclivities and activities."
"Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known comedian, and Jessica Seinfeld is his wife, but that does not give them license to slander and plagiarize," the lawsuit said.
A lawyer for the Seinfelds disputed Lapine's claims of plagiarism and defamation, saying her lawsuit lacked merit.
"There's no truth in fact or law to this claim of plagiarism," attorney Richard Menaker told the Associated Press. "The idea for Jessica Seinfeld's book came from her own experiences with her family out of her own kitchen."
Menaker also shrugged off Lapine's allegation that she had been defamed by Seinfeld's comments and suggested her legal action was simply a means of boosting her book's sales.
"Jerry Seinfeld is entitled to his opinions," Menaker said. "Even though Jerry Seinfeld is a public figure, he doesn't lose his right to free speech because of that."