Dancer Seeks Damages for Toxic Bear Suit

Warning: Hollywood can be hazardous to your health. . . .

What with all the dancing elves and sugarplum fairies, the Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas extravaganza is about as harmless as it gets. But nothing is safe any more. Consider the case of the toxic bear suit.

According to papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, a dancer named Kristen Young was “exposed to harmful chemicals” last year while working on the Radio City Musical Hall Christmas Spectacular.

Court papers state that “the performance required her to wear a bear costume.” The bear’s head was constructed using a product marketed under the name Barge Cement.

Young was injured on the job by her “defective and unsafe” bear costume and required extended medical treatment. The workers’ compensation carrier, Continental Casualty Co., is seeking in excess of $25,000 from a company called Costumes and Creatures and five other defendants.

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LOUSY MOUSIE: An animator who claims he was injured by his computer mouse while helping to bring to life the walking, talking movie mouse Stuart Little is suing Sony Pictures, saying he was illegally fired.

Kim Blanchette seeks unspecified damages in his Los Angeles Superior Court suit. He alleges that Sony management made him a scapegoat and treated him in a “cold, deliberate, callous, . . . fraudulent, malicious and oppressive manner” after he switched from using a mouse to a slower-moving stylus at work.

Court papers say Blanchette’s boss accused him of having a preexisting repetitive stress injury before signing on with Sony. Blanchette denies it.

Nonetheless, court papers say, Blanchette was forced to switch back to using a mouse to keep pace with the production schedule. He also claims he was humiliated and held up as a bad example at staff meetings.

“Stuart Little” opened this weekend. A Sony spokesman couldn’t be reached.

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PSYCHIC FRIEND: A state appeals court has upheld a $635,000 jury award to a psychic who was videotaped by a hidden camera for an expose on ABC’s “Prime Time Live.”

Mark Sanders, an employee of PMG Psychic Marketing Group, sued ABC in 1993, alleging that his privacy was invaded by a hidden camera as he worked. An ABC employee posing as a fellow psychic videotaped him with a tiny camera hidden in a shirt button.

The 1994 case was the first to go to trial in the United States involving the media’s use of hidden cameras. In June, the state Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that hidden cameras do invade people’s privacy.

Sanders was awarded $335,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages from ABC in connection with the 1993 broadcast, said Brian Rishwain, one of his lawyers. With interest, Rishwain said, the award now exceeds $1 million. ABC isn’t commenting.

We wonder if Sanders saw a big pot of gold in his own future.

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TICK, TOCK: A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has tossed out a palimony suit against O.J. Simpson criminal defense attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., citing a legal technicality.

Judge Wendell Mortimer Jr. ruled that the statute of limitations has expired on Patricia Cochran’s claim since the couple broke up in 1986. Her lawyer, Joe Carcione, vowed an appeal. Cochran’s lawyer, Larry Feldman, said he’s confident the decision will stand.

Patricia Cochran contends that she had a 30-year relationship with Cochran, bore him a son, and took his name. He kept his promise to support her and the son until--she claimed--she discussed Cochran on Geraldo Rivera’s television show in the midst of the Simpson spectacle. After that, she abruptly was cut off, she claims.

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IN A HUFFINGTON: Political commentator Arianna Huffington is suing Warner Bros., claiming the studio backed out of its promise to pay her $50,000 to use her trash-bio of Pablo Picasso for the film “Surviving Picasso.”

In her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, Huffington said she signed contracts in 1987 and 1995 with Warner Bros. allowing the studio to use her 1988 book “Picasso: Creator and Destroyer” for the film. The book posited the theory that Picasso’s Cubist masterworks were really a way of sublimating his misogynist desires to cut women into tiny bits.

Huffington’s tome also blamed the artiste for leaving a trail of human wreckage behind him--including three suicides and two nervous breakdowns.

Also named as defendants in Huffington’s suit are New York’s Merchant Ivory Productions Inc., which has brought many a bonnet movie to the big screen, and another company, Surviving Productions Inc.

Huffington’s lawsuit contends that she made repeated demands for payment, and was promised as recently as October that she would be paid in 10 to 15 days.

Even with Anthony Hopkins in the title role, “Surviving Picasso” flopped. Now it’s on to the next chapter: Surviving Arianna.

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YOU’RE GROUNDED, MOM: Teenage actress Jena Malone has won an early round in her legal battle to keep her mother’s hands off her budding career--and her money.

Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe issued a restraining order against Debbie Malone. It remains in effect until Jan. 14, when Jena Malone seeks legal emancipation from her mother.

In court papers filed last month, Jena Malone alleged that her mother “squandered” her earnings, estimated at more than $1 million, through “excessive spending and mismanagement.”

The 14-year-old claimed in the court papers that her mother had spent much of her acting money on investment schemes, or had given it to other relatives.