EXCLUSIVE

As FishbowlNY first reported, lawyers for Denise Brown and Nicole Brown‘s are furious over this week’s New York magazine article by Vanessa Grigoriadis chronicling the O.J. Simpson book debacle and subsequent fall of Judith Regan at News Corp — specifically, the Brown family’s involvement in HarperCollins’ attempts to pay them off with profits from the ill-fated If I Did It book project.

New York magazine’s response, via spokesperson Serena Torrey:

New York’s story reflects the facts as we know them. News Corp. executives present at the meeting in Indianapolis say that one of the lawyers there was representing the Brown family in the negotiation. The Brown family maintains that that is not the case. A day after a prospective settlement was hammered out and presented, the Brown family conclusively rejected it. While Vanessa Grigoriadis called the Brown’s lawyer for comment 24 hours before final closing, we are sorry we were not able to represent the Browns’ position fully in the article.

Torrey adds that the magazine first became aware of the Browns’ complaints via FishbowlNY — when we obtained and posted a faxed letter from Brown family lawyer Natasha Roit to New York — and that it never arrived at New York‘s offices or those of its owner, Bruce Wasserstein:

Incidentally, the only place we’ve seen this letter is on your site today. It never arrived in any offices associated with New York magazine or Bruce Wasserstein.

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