By: Ellen Cans

An interior designer to the rich and famous claims that the former CEO of Real Estate brokerage firm Douglas Elliman treated her “like a doormat’’ and allegedly stiffed her out of close to $250,000 for renovations in her Hampton estate. Dale Cohen handled posh interior design projects including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Gracie Mansion and Mets owner Steve Cohen’s $30 million Greenwich home.

As reported by the New York Post, Dale is alleging that Dottie Herman, also known as Dorothy D’Ambrosio, the former CEO who still serves as Vice Chair of Douglas Elliman, has yet to pay her for work on her Southampton home assigned in 2017.

Cohen says Herman had asked her to help with the gut renovation of her 5,500-square-foot home. “It was a very fraught relationship,” Cohen said of the business dealing, adding that she was the third designer for the home and came in at the middle of the project. The report in The New York Post indicated that Cohen, who has a master’s in architecture from Yale, claims Herman was unable to make executive decisions and failed to attend design meetings, turning the job into a nightmare.

The designer alleges Herman laid the blame on her, and ceased payments on the job, which came to a total $350,000 for her work, plus the alleged late fees, as per the complaint Cohen filed with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The designer claims that Herman, who famously sold her stake in the real-estate firm for $40 million in 2018, still owes her roughly $250,000 to cover the bill.

According to the information provided in The New York Post report, Cohen said she was brought on to the project in August 2017 to help prepare the home for a summer move-in date. “This is not a project that should have taken more than 18 months total,” said Cohen, “including all construction and the interior.”

Cohen alleged that she spent months struggling to schedule meetings with Herman and getting her to decide on things like tiles and lighting fixtures.

Cohen filed the complaint this June, claiming that she “worked with Dottie assiduously over the course of a year to approximately 95% completion of the renovation portion of her project.” She added in the complaint, “Dottie missed several payments to me in July and August of 2018.”

“I requested these funds and others that are owed. She has refused to make any payments, she has refused to provide the necessary documentation, and though she said on many occasions that she would pay me, she has refused to answer any entreaties to do so. … Please note that I have three signed contracts for my work,” Cohen alleges in the complaint.

Herman’s lawyers have responded calling Cohen’s claims “frivolous” and allege she was paid in full. “I don’t know how Ms. Cohen invented the idea that she’s owed $300,000,” one of Herman’s lawyers, David Wolf claimed in a statement to The New York Post. “Ms. Cohen’s claims have no merit whatsoever, she’s been paid in full, and she isn’t owed a single penny.”

He also questioned why Cohen waited so long to raise the issue and alleged her invoiced amounts were “egregious overreaches,” per a letter submitted in response to the designer’s DCWP complaint, The New York Post reported. Wolf noted that a lien Cohen filed against Herman’s home was dismissed in 2018 for administrative reasons.