'Alibi,' Teri Woods' crime thriller, hit bookstores recently to relatively rave reviews. All that remained was a party to celebrate her success. She picked the tony Greenhouse club in SoHo where she and nearly 200 friends planned to mark the occasion last Thursday.

But things turned sour when nearly all of her guests were turned away at the door because of the color of their skin, some partygoers alleged yesterday, according to the New York Daily News.

The cruel reminder of the Jim Crow era prompted the partygoers to file a $1 billion class-action suit, which says they were denied entry because they were black, the Daily News says. But a lawyer for club owner Barry Mullineux struck back yesterday, vehemently denying the charges in an e-mail statement to AOL Black Voices.
"My client has not been served, nor have we received any legal documents pertaining to the grossly false allegations made by Ms. Woods,'' Sen. John L. Sampson, partner of Gail A. Adams & Associates said in the e-mail statement. "When we have, we will review and take legal action. However we will not litigate this matter through the media as Ms. Woods has. The owners of Greenhouse have provided top level service and a quality experience for over a decade and cater to an inclusive array of patrons of all races, religions, creeds, and sexual orientations."

In her account to the Daily News, Woods said she has text messages from the owner showing he was barring people based on appearance. When asked if he recalled sending the texts, the owner told the Daily News, "Not word for word.''

Woods told the Daily news that she and many others felt violated that night, and indicated that the discrimination may have had to do with weight and perhaps race.

Woods, who worked as a legal secretary and paralegal for eight years at a law firm, tried for years to sell her first novel, 'True to The Game.' Rejection after rejection from major publishing houses, led friends to encourage her in 1999 to sell her self-published work on her own. She did on street corners from the trunk of her car, and the hard work paid off. She became a self-made millionaire in three years and is credited with reviving the urban fiction genre. Today, she lives in New Jersey with her two children.