DOCUMENT: Celebrity

Michael Ovitz Has A Bad Dog Day

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Michael Ovitz Has A Bad Dog Day

A Los Angeles woman is suing Hollywood pit bull Michael Ovitz, claiming the former superagent's dogs attacked her as she walked her own pooches near Ovitz's Brentwood estate. Genevieve Saffron alleges that Ovitz's dogs--reportedly a St. Bernard and a 118-pound Golden Retriever named Aspen--were "loose, on the street, without any human supervision and were not on leashes" when they mauled Saffron and her canines, a pug and a Chihuahua. In this just-filed Los Angeles Municipal Court lawsuit, Saffron claims that she was bitten by an Ovitz dog during the attack last October and sustained other "serious and devastating injuries and damages" that caused her to miss work and incur assorted "medical and incidental expenses." Saffron's negligence lawsuit, which does not specify monetary damages, alleges that Ovitz violated L.A.'s leash law by allowing his dogs to roam free near their North Rockingham Avenue crib. Once Hollywood's most powerful figure, the 55-year-old Ovitz has encountered a series of business failures that have severely reduced his Tinseltown influence. He recently attributed some of these pitfalls to the entertainment industry's "gay Mafia," members of which Ovitz believes have conspired to sabotage his career. (5 pages)

10/28 UPDATE: Hours after we first disclosed the Ovitz lawsuit, Saffron's lawyer, Steven Glickman, told TSG that he had reached an out-of-court deal with the Hollywood heavyweight (details of which were confidential). While we'd like to take some credit for expediting the settlement, we have a feeling that a Drudge Report link to our story really put the pressure on Ovitz.

SAY CHEESE: Mug shots of the rich and famous.