"Heidi Klum of Foot Models" Sues Building

A woman known as "the Heidi Klum" of foot models is suing her upscale Manhattan apartment building, claiming the co-op board is trying to force her and her new husband out because she married its former doorman.

Christina Ambers filed a $10 million lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court against residents and the management of the swank building on the borough's upper-East Side known as the Avon House, where Ambers has lived since 2003.

The lawsuit claims her husband, Angel Rotger, lost his job, and the luxury building engaged in a pattern of retaliation after the couple became romantically involved, by having employees do things such as forcing her to hail her own taxis and retrieve her own packages.

The suit claims residents object to "a Hispanic former porter" living in the building and the board is trying show them the door as a result.

The couple married in July.

Building lawyer Joe Colbert says the claims have "no merit." He tells CBS News the termination of Ambers' lease had nothing to do with her relationship with Rotger, and stems from other "objectionable conduct." He wouldn't give details on what that alleged conduct involved.

But, in an exclusive interview on "The Early Show Saturday Edition," the couple's attorney, Josh Price, said, "We're suing because my client has been treated differently by this cooperative board, by this management company, because of the relationship she had with the doorman in the building."

Ambers told Hill her troubles in the building began before she and Rotger started dating, while he was still the doorman, and centered around her claims that a repair on her apartment's floor was faulty.

One of the things that brought them together, they say, was that Rotger was one of the people in the building who was consistently pleasant with Ambers.

"I was always very nice to Christine," Rotger told Hill, "regardless of what they told me to do and instructed me to do. I was instructed to stay away from her at all cost and to refrain from any kind of communication with her. They just basically stated that she was a quote/unquote 'problem' and that I should refrain from any conversation or any kind of contact whatsoever."

They wouldn't elaborate on that, he says, adding that he was fired before marrying Ambers, when he and she were just friends, "and I was warned at that time to stay away from her. And I was doing various tasks for other tenants that I would usually do for anyone else, and I would do them for her. And they warned me upon entering her apartment, the very minute I entered her apartment, they said, 'Well, we found out last night that you were in Christine's apartment, and that if you're found on to be in there again..."