UPPER EAST SIDE — It wasn’t a happy meal.
An Upper East Side dad locked in a bitter custody battle is suing a court-appointed psychologist, claiming she wrongfully accused him being a bad parent for not taking his kid to McDonald’s for dinner.
David Evan Schorr claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that Dr. Marilyn Schiller issued a report to the judge overseeing his divorce case in which she said he was “wholly incapable of taking care of” his 4-year-old son.
Schorr, 43, says Schiller based her assessment on a single recent incident — when a night out with his son ended early because the child threw a super-sized tantrum over where they would eat.
Schorr said he had picked his son up from his estranged wife’s apartment on Oct. 30 and offered to take his kid anywhere he wanted — except the McDonald’s. Schorr ordered the fast-food chain off limits because his son had been eating too much junk food lately, according to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Civil Supreme Court.
The burger ban didn’t sit well with his son, and when the boy refused to go anywhere else, Schorr said he took him back to his wife’s apartment.
“The child, stubborn as a mule, chose the 'no dinner' option,” the lawsuit says.
Schorr, a lawyer, says he and his son waited 20 minutes in the apartment lobby until his fashion-exec wife, Bari Yunis-Schorr, came home from work but continued to ask if he would go anywhere else for dinner. The boy wouldn’t budge, Schorr says.
The lawsuit claims that during the boy’s meltdown, he thought about changing his mind and going to McDonald’s, but didn’t want to reward the child for bad behavior.
His parenting style stuck in the craw of his wife and Schiller, according to the lawsuit. When Yunis-Schorr informed Schiller of the incident, the psychologist rushed to the house and interviewed the child.
She then called the court-appointed lawyer for the 4-year-old, asking for his help in seeking a court intervention. Schorr says his son’s lawyer refused, but Schiller still submitted a status report to the court requesting that it restrict Schorr’s parenting time.
Schorr is suing Schiller for defamation and negligence. He claims Schiller was appointed by the court to make a “complete forensic evaluation” of the entire family, but the psychologist never interviewed him about the incident.
Schorr, who has been divorce proceeding since 2011, claims he has never had a bad incident with his son in the past two and half years.
