Finally! Ed Fagan Is Collecting His Share

[joinme2leave]

just heard it in the 105fm news some minutes ago...

Ed Fagan, the -yeah- so honorable US attorney is taking part in the show.

Claiming money for presumably austrian and german victims.

Go on Ed, u did not succeed (yet) in my original home town desaster...give it another try and make things worse for tourism!!!

[daxbr]

Story from another home town paper. Is that the same guy?

01/15/05 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom

Lawyer's 'hero' image tarnished

Many say Parsippany champion of Holocaust cases did little work

By Abbott Koloff, Daily Record

Edward Fagan represented himself as an attorney who worked hard to support human rights. He was known for cases that won billions of dollars in settlements for Holocaust survivors. He was planning one high-profile case against businesses that supported South African Apartheid and another targeting companies that financed the African slave trade hundreds of years ago.

After news came out this week that New Jersey ethics officials charged him with misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars entrusted to him by two Holocaust survivors, a different image emerged.

Attorneys who worked with him in the past have said that while he was the face of the Holocaust cases, he did little of the actual legal work. He has been charged by clients in other cases, including two in New Jersey, with neglecting them and lying about the status of their cases. He has been sued by a Bergen County law firm that represented him in a New Jersey ethics case, and by an old friend from Livingston who loaned him money.

Fagan, 52, who recently moved to a Parsippany apartment complex, was not available for comment this week. He did not answer calls from the security desk at his complex. He did not respond to two notes left in his mailbox. Two attorneys who represented him in the past say they don't represent him now, and Fagan has not yet responded to the recent complaint by the state's Office of Attorney Ethics.

One of his former colleagues said this week that Fagan, who had law offices in New York, Short Hills and Livingston, was better at getting publicity than he was at legal work. A Holocaust victim who had been his client, and who used to bring him homemade potato kugels, said Fagan took money out of a trust account she established with him. And a one-time friend said Fagan made a frantic call begging for money in 1998 but did not pay it back.

Fagan used that money, according to a state ethics complaint, to partially pay back a client whose trust fund he had been using for unauthorized purposes.

An Essex County judge ruled in 2003 that Fagan failed to pay back $260,000 in loans to Andrew Decter, of Livingston, and owed Decter's company money for helping to create a computer database to keep track of 80,000 claimants in a class action lawsuit to benefit Holocaust survivors. The judge ruled Fagan owed Decter and his company $761,000, which included interest and attorneys fees.

Andrew Decter was in China this week and unavailable for comment but his wife, Janine, said she and her husband used to be friendly with Fagan and his wife. Ed Fagan used to come over to swim at their pool, she said. Then one day Fagan called from Europe, Janine Decter said, and said he needed cash.

"He said: 'I'm a dead man unless I have this money,'" Janine Decter said.

Janine Decter said it wasn't unusual for Fagan to make dramatic claims. He had filed a lawsuit against Swiss banks that allegedly hoarded the money of Holocaust victims and, according to Janine Decter, often claimed the Swiss were "after him."

First taste of fame

Fagan, a personal injury lawyer, got his first taste of fame in 1996 when he filed a lawsuit against Swiss banks on behalf of Gizella Weisshaus, 75, of Brooklyn, who had been his client in another case.

Weisshaus said this week that she had been sitting in Fagan's office one day in 1996 reading a story about Swiss banks holding the money of Holocaust victims. She made a casual comment about it. Fagan said he would need a client with a valid claim in order to sue the Swiss banks, she said, someone who could claim family ties to a Swiss account.

"I am the one," Weisshaus told him.

Weisshaus, who grew up in Romania and as a girl had been held in Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp, said that before her father was arrested by Nazis and disappeared forever, he told her he had money stashed away in a Swiss bank. She said she had some documents to back up her case and one of her father's former colleagues remembered him having money deposited in Switzerland.

Weisshaus said she trusted Fagan and believed in him so much that she offered to work in his office without pay, helping to keep track of files. She said he apparently could not afford to hire enough help, although she said he had a beautiful office on Broadway in Manhattan, the waiting room walls decorated with wood carvings. She said she brought him potato kugels every week.

"I thought we were working for a good cause," she said.

Weisshaus also gave Fagan $82,000 to hold in a trust account -- money from her cousin's estate that originally came from Germany as part of a Holocaust restitution. She said she was so busy with the Swiss bank case that she didn't pay attention to that account. Then, one day, she said she noticed money had been taken out of it

Almost nothing left

The New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics, in a recently filed complaint, says Fagan took money out of that account until almost nothing was left. The complaint also says Fagan took $427,000 out of another trust fund he set up for a woman named Estelle Sapir, of Queens, who was given $500,000 in a settlement with Swiss banks and has since died. The complaint says Fagan used money from Sapir's account to pay back some of the money he owed to Weisshaus. It says he borrowed money from Decter to pay back less than half the money he owed to Sapir's heirs.

Fagan reportedly had been collecting handsome fees for his work as lead attorney in Holocaust cases -- which led to Swiss banks settling for $1.2 billion and German companies for $5 billion. He became something of a celebrity and took credit for the Holocaust cases, saying they would not have happened without him.

But attorneys who worked with him on those cases have said over the years that he was more image than substance, that he spent all of his time seeking publicity and did little legal work.

"He filed the first case against the Swiss banks," Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor who worked on the Holocaust cases, said in an interview this week. "He had the guts to do that. He had a brilliant sense of public relations. … He was good talking to newspapers. You didn't want to get between him and a camera. But he played a minor role (in legal negotiations). The real problem was the press. They treated him like he was a serious person. He became an institution."

Neuborne kept his comments brief and said he had little else to say about Fagan.

"As far as I'm concerned," he said, "I never want to hear the guy's name again."

High profile cases

Fagan went on to other high-profile cases. He was part of a lawsuit filed against companies that supported South African Apartheid. South African lawyers said in published reports a couple of years ago that they were dropping him from the case because he seemed more interested in holding press conferences than doing legal work. Fagan recently filed a lawsuit against Lloyds of London, which is pending, asking for billions of dollars for descendents of slaves brought to America on ships underwritten by that company.

Many people applauded Fagan for his work, particularly for his successes in the Holocaust cases. He was seen in some places as a hero for the downtrodden. But in published reports years ago other clients charged that he was neglecting them. Fagan was ordered last year to pay $3.2 million to a Brooklyn man who charged that the attorney neglected his personal injury case. The judge ruled Fagan sued the wrong parties, failed to oppose motions by other lawyers, and misled his client about the status of his case.

Fagan did the same thing in New Jersey in two cases, according papers filed with the state Supreme Court. He was admonished by the state Disciplinary Review Board for "unethical" conduct in 2003 for failing to keep a client informed about the status of her case.

In another case, he was reprimanded by the same board, a more serious punishment, after a client charged that he had been lying to her about her case. She said he told her that her personal injury case was about to go to court and he was about to file a motion, according to court documents. He later wrote that "your case is back moving again" and that he expected to take depositions. The review board, in a 2002 decision, determined no motions were filed, no depositions taken. It stated that one letter was "was written to deceive (the client)."

Fagan argued, according to the court papers, that his client really didn't have a case and he did not want to file a frivolous lawsuit. But he acknowledged that his language in letters to her had been "inartful."

Raymond Barto, a Bergen County attorney who represented Fagan in that case, argued at the time that his client was busy with "socially conscious activities." That wasn't meant to be a defense, Barto now says, but a mitigating factor.

"I really believed in what he was doing," Barto said this week.

Barto said he couldn't comment on the charges now being leveled against his former client but his law firm had its own problems with Fagan. It filed a lawsuit against him last year for failing to pay more than $7,000 in legal fees.

http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/articles/n...Akmorefagan.htm

[joinme2leave]

well, i guess that's him (Ed Fagan) as he became popular with cases like Holocaust files. What I mentioned - and beeing in close relation to actual Thailand situation - is his utmost interest to sue private companies mostly in favor to his own pocket. All I heard so far (again: I can only refer to FM 105 news from this evening) is that he is "representing" victim's families (austrian and germans) who are likely to argument that some hotels might have been in one way or the other responsible for the loss of their loved ones. HOW DISGUSTING!!!! Same thing he (Ed Fagan) tries to do in austria ... and, men i can tell ya ... his PR appearance do no good to (seriously) affected tourism regions (no matter who ever might be gulity for whatever happened)

[The_Moog]

It sounds frivolous...but in the right court room.

In Indonesia you'd definitely win - just bribe the judge (but which Defendants would be 5 star hotels there?)

In Thailand there are 5 Star hotels. Did any employees of the hotel companies - anywhere in the world know of the quake - should they have told their Khao Lak / Phuket operations ? Did they have that 'Duty of Care' ?

Negligence is what this 'Ambulance Chaser' will go for - hope to settle out of court and get his contingency.

Sillier cases have succeeded - Lady with the Macdonalds hot coffee between her legs while driving and spilling it. Policeman who win damages for being present at gory murder scenes and feeling upset.

Edited February 16, 2005 by The_Moog