Bizarre legal battle between Marvel chairman and his Palm Beach neighbor comes to an end

A legal battle between Marvel's Isaac Perlmutter and his Palm Beach neighbor finally is over, following years of lawsuits and bizarre allegations of hate mail and threats.

In September, Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Cymonie Rowe dismissed two lawsuits against Perlmutter, Marvel Entertainment's chairman, and his wife, Laurie. 

In one order, Rowe ruled an eight-year lawsuit against Perlmutter by Palm Beach neighbor Harold Peerenboom was baseless, prompting Rowe to dismiss the case. In another order, Rowe tossed a lawsuit by Peerenboom claiming he was defamed by Perlmutter.

What started the lawsuit? 

The initial trigger for the rumble between the neighbors? A spat over the management of the tennis center at their island residence, the exclusive Sloan's Curve community.

Only in Palm Beach could a neighborhood dispute over recreational amenities trigger an arsenal of lawyers and years of litigation. But the splashy fight, first reported by The Palm Beach Post in 2013, drew national and even international headlines.

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That's because Perlmutter is a billionaire who wrested control of Marvel from another billionaire dealmaker, Ronald Perlman, and later fended off efforts by yet another billionaire investor, Carl Icahn, to take control of the superhero empire. 

In 2009, Perlmutter sold Marvel to Disney for $4 billion but maintained a leadership role and still serves as the subsidiary's chairman. Perlmutter, a longtime resident of Sloan's Curve, is worth $6 billion and ranked No. 172 on the Forbes list of 400 Richest Americans.

Famed Miami attorney Roy Black, who along with Jared Lopez and Josh Dubin represented the Perlmutters, said Isaac Perlmutter is pleased with Rowe's ruling.

"For eight years, he has lived under the cloud of being behind this vicious campaign," Black said of Isaac Perlmutter. "Now the court has fully exonerated him and his wife."

Peerenboom had plenty of legal firepower on his side, too, including renowned New York attorney Marc Kasowitz.

Kasowitz previously represented former President Donald J. Trump, handling the Trump University fraud lawsuit. For a time, Kasowitz also was lead counsel on investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. A lawyer at Kasowitz's law firm also served as an attorney for Trump during for a Senate impeachment trial in 2020. Although Trump was impeached in the House, he was acquitted in the Senate.

Attorneys representing Peerenboom did not return a request for comment.

Perlmutter, a member of Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club on Palm Beach, also is close to the former president. Despite being known for being press shy, Perlmutter was sometimes seen and photographed at Mar-a-Lago during Trump's administration.

Perlmutter's typically low profile didn't keep him out of controversy during Trump's presidency, however. ProPublica and other news outlets reported he was part of a triumvirate of Mar-a-Lago members who quietly helped run the Veterans Administration, even though none of them had experience serving in the U.S. military or government.

Battle royale over courts and balls

The dispute between Perlmutter and Peerenboom started soon after Peerenboom's 2007 purchase of a home at Sloan's Curve, an oceanfront community of 22 private homes and two condominium buildings on Palm Beach.

Soon after Peerenboom settled on Palm Beach, he challenged the continued management of the tennis facility by Karen Donnelly and her company, Kay-Dee Sportswear. At the time, Donnelly had managed the facilities since 1993 in a no-bid arrangement.

Perlmutter, an avid tennis player, opposed changing the way the tennis contract was handled, court records said.

Peerenboom's challenge of the Donnelly arrangement was not well-received by several Sloan's Curve residents in addition to Perlmutter, according to court records. That led to pushback against Peerenboom, which he claimed culminated in a letter-writing campaign against him.

In 2013, Peerenboom filed a 95-page complaint against Perlmutter, alleging he was behind a bizarre hate-mail campaign to discredit and threaten Peerenboom.

In his lawsuit, Peerenboom said more than 1,000 false and hate-filled letters about him were mailed to Palm Beach residents and friends, family and even business officials and clients in Canada. Their postmarks included West Palm Beach, Tampa and Phoenix.

The mailings started in 2011 with the distribution of critical newspaper articles about Peerenboom's business conduct in Canada. Peerenboom founded the multinational executive search firm Mandrake Management.

But in 2012, the mailings escalated into allegations that claimed Peerenboom was a pedophile and murderer.

More strange mailings were also distributed. They included letters written as if from Peerenboom to inmates at state and federal prisons, calling prisoners names and daring them to see Peerenboom on Palm Beach when they got out of jail, the complaint said.

One letter also warned Peerenboom to leave Sloan's Curve and called him a "hatichat harah," which the complaint said is a Hebrew slang expression meaning "piece of (expletive deleted)," according to the complaint.

Perlmutter did send out mailings in 2011 that included newspaper stories about Peerenboom's improper business practices in Canada, Rowe's September order said. While the letters might have been sent in spite, Rowe wrote, they did not rise to the level of "outrageousness" required for money damages.

Rowe also noted that Perlmutter's characterization of Peerenboom as a "serial liar" and "fraudster" in a 2016 mailing were truthful representations of a prior ruling in the case. That ruling involved Peerenboom's secret effort to collect DNA on the Perlmutters in a failed bid to link them to the hate-mail campaign.

Most importantly, Rowe's September ruling found that there was "no evidence whatsoever" linking Perlmutter to the subsequent hate mail campaigns and threats, which stretched to 2016.

Instead, the perpetrators of those mailings included a Canadian national and a former terminated employee of Peerenboom's company, court records said.

aclough@pbpost.com