Karen Salmansohn, the $200-an-hour life coach and author of such self-help books as How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Successful Dog Trainers, has filed a lawsuit against one Long Island man who just couldn't be housebroken. According to her lawsuit, Salmansohn, 49, met Mitchell Leff, the Laundromat king of Long Island, at Pastis one morning last August. Romance blossomed, and when Leff revealed that he was separated from his wife, he quickly barked that he was filing for divorce. On their second date, Salmansohn told him she wanted a child, and Leff allegedly wagged his tail happily. But after getting engaged ($10K Tiffany ring!) and breeding successfully in December, she says Leff essentially peed all over her rug and ran.
"I may be a self-help expert, but I'm not a psychic," Salmansohn tells the Daily News. "It was a great surprise that he broke his emotional and financial commitment." She claims that within 24 hours of informing Leff of her pregnancy, he told her to get an abortion because he was too old to start a family. He allegedly left behind "piles of unpaid medical bills" after he bankrolled over $28,000 in fertility treatments, and spent "lavishly" so Salmansohn could make her Chelsea home kid-friendly. "Who goes to a fertility clinic and spends nearly $30,000, then walks away?" Salmansohn asks.
Then she found out that the guy who once said he wished "aliens would come down and remove my wife so I could marry you right away" never actually filed for divorce. And according to the lawsuit, for the past 30 years, much of his income came from working as a bookie! "It was a shock on top of a shock on top of a shock," Salmansohn says. She refused to get an abortion, and now she's coming after Leff with the rolled-up newspaper and a can of pennies to force him to make good on his "oral contract."
