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Judge blasts wife in granting YouTube divorce

The Associated Press

4:44 PM EDT, July 21, 2008

A Manhattan judge yesterday granted a divorce to a Broadway mogul whose actress wife trashes him in a widely viewed YouTube video, slamming the woman for cruelly trying to publicly humiliate her ex-husband.

Judge Harold Beeler approved Philip Smith's petition for a divorce from Tricia Walsh-Smith on the grounds of cruel and inhuman treatment.

Walsh-Smith lashes out against Smith in the tearful and furious YouTube video, which has attracted more than 3 million hits. She makes embarrassing claims about their intimate life and then calls his office to repeat those claims to a stunned assistant.

On the video, Walsh-Smith also goes through their wedding album, describing family members as "bad," "evil" or "nasty," and expresses concern about eviction from the couple's luxury apartment.

Beeler blasted Walsh-Smith for her video stunt, which he called "a calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband" and to pressure him into settling the case on more favorable terms than were stated in their prenuptial agreement.

"She has attempted to turn the life of her husband into a soap opera by directing, writing, acting in and producing a melodrama," the judge said.

He said Monday that the prenuptial agreement, signed three weeks before the couple's 1999 wedding, was valid. This means Walsh-Smith must leave their Park Avenue apartment within 30 days and Smith, president of The Shubert Organization, the largest theater owner on Broadway, must pay her $750,000.

Smith said after the ruling he was "sorry it had to come to this."

"I'm happy with the decision of the judge, and I'm happy with the outcome," he said.

Walsh-Smith didn't see the decision the same way.

"I think it's disgusting," she said. "I'm really, really disappointed with the decision."

She accused Smith of "basically throwing me out on the street." One of her attorneys, Joseph P. McCaffery, said they would appeal.

The famed divorce attorney Raoul Felder briefly represented Walsh-Smith after she made the video. Felder had termed the whole thing "funny, but there's also sadness."

"This is a victim who is holding her head up," he said. "I think she comes off well."

Felder has explained that his client was "acting out of passion."

He called the prenuptial agreement she'd signed with her husband, who is a quarter-century older than her, "stupid."

So why did his client sign?

"Why do women sign these things? Love is blind, and sometimes it is deaf and dumb, too," Felder said.

The video, he added, was the act of a powerless person, and "revolutions are made by powerless people."