BROOKS
Incredibly, the song “You Light Up My Life” is still a moneymaker — but the accused-murderer son of the sappy song’s composer shouldn’t see a penny from it, the parents of a beautiful swimsuit designer strangled at the Soho House hotel say in a lawsuit to be filed today.
“We want to make sure that he does not in any way profit from that horrendous song,” lawyer Susan Karten said of Nicholas Brooks, the stoner son of Oscar-winning composer Joseph Brooks.
Karten’s lawsuit seeks an unspecified dollar amount from Nicholas for the physical and emotional pain and wrongful death of his girlfriend, Sylvie Cachay, 33, who had designed for Victoria’s Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs and her own swim label, Syla.
The beauty’s strangled and drowned corpse was found partially undressed in an overflowing bathtub at the pricey hotel where she and Nicholas Brooks had fled after a small fire broke out in her West Village apartment. She had told him she wanted to end the relationship, and the two had been arguing, authorities said.
Her death was almost a year ago, in early December 2010. Cachay’s Virginia-based parents are filing now to beat the one-year deadline for such lawsuits, Karten explained.
“We want to do everything we can as a family, civilly, to keep him from getting any money that might be coming to him,” said Cachay’s brother, Patrick Orlando.
“We don’t want him to ever earn a penny,” agreed her surgeon dad, Dr. Antonio Cachay.
The dad, his wife Sylvie, and Orlando had come to Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday to see Brooks appear for a brief hearing in the murder case. They said they are heartbroken each time they see the lanky stoner, who came to court clean-shaven and with a short haircut.
Brooks will go to trial next year to fight the murder charge, his lawyer, Jeffrey Hoffman, has said. Hoffman did not return phone calls seeking comment on the suit.
“The criminal case is strong,” Karten said yesterday. Hotel surveillance and phone records show Brooks was still in the hotel room when downstairs guests began calling the concierge to complain about the water leaking from above.
“But God forbid there is an O.J. Simpson scenario?” Karten added. “What if he is acquitted? We have to protect the family.”
The lecherous elder Brooks — who committed suicide in May — left no money to his children and may have left behind an insolvent estate, according to court papers filed earlier this month.
It remains unclear how much money comes in, and whom it belongs to, Karten said.
“Would it ever get funneled back to Nick Brooks? Does his share stay in a trust until he gets out of jail? We just don’t know,” she said.