Ed Fagan
Encyclopedia
Edward Davis "Ed" Fagan (born October 20, 1952) is a controversial former American
reparations
lawyer
who was punished by the Supreme Court for his conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. Edward Fagan was disbarred in New York
and New Jersey
for failing to pay court fines and fees and for stealing client money and escrow trust funds from Holocaust survivors.
. He grew up in a Conservative Jewish
home in San Antonio, Texas
and has two children. Prior to embarking on his legal career, he traveled to Israel
to take part in the Yom Kippur War
. After returning to the US, he enrolled in Cardozo School of Law and graduated in 1980. He initially worked as a personal injury lawyer
, then worked with a large law firm, representing corporate defendants, before he started an exploration club for the wealthy in the 1980s, allowing rich customers to visit exotic locations, entertained and accompanied by scientists and environmentalists. A nonprofit venture of the business, the Odyssoe Foundation, was created in 1991, but collapsed with the entire enterprise.
Clients and partners have stated publicly and in court, that Fagan often failed to represent the interest of his clients, he generally takes on "too many clients", "vastly outstrips his resources", and is "often absent for the legal fight". According to Burt Neuborne
, law professor at New York University
, who had worked with Mr. Fagan before breaking with him, "Mr. Fagan's filing in the Swiss banks case was so inadequate that a judge asked him to rewrite it. ... This was an ordinary man who got swept up in issues that were bigger than he was."
bank
s which had refused to repay money that belonged to Holocaust victims. The banks in question settled the claims outside of court, resulting in a payout of US$1.25 billion.
According to news reports Ed Fagan even held up the final formal signing of the German slave labor settlement because he wanted more money for himself. While several hundred people and German and American representatives waited, Ed Fagan, still wearing an ABCNEWS 20/20 microphone, could be heard "haggling over the fees, and then boasting of his success". He was recorded saying, "I got the legal fees up, ... We did great, we did great we just got another, we just got some more money.”
Amongst Fagan's many critics is New York University
law professor Burt Neuborne, who said on record: "We essentially worked around him, ... I mean, he was, he was there, but, but he played, if I tell you zero, I mean zero role in developing the legal theory, in presenting the legal theory, and in participating as a lawyer." Neuborne, a leading human rights
lawyer, believes it's time to set the record straight:
In 1998, Mrs. Gizella Weisshaus, the named plaintiff in the lawsuit against Swiss banks, opted out of that historic settlement because she felt that her attorneys were more interested in paying themselves millions of dollars, even before some of the survivors had received any money. On April 8, 1998 Mrs. Gizella Weisshauss filed an attorney ethics complaint, claiming that Edward D. Fagan, her lawyer at the time, held back $82,583.04 belonging to her from the estate of her deceased cousin Jack Oestreicher. Hal R. Lieberman, Esq. from Departmental Disciplinary Committee, Supreme Court, Appellate Division, responded on May 6, 1998, that in this "ongoing criminal proceeding" the outcome of the disciplinary investigation should be awaited.
In 2000, Fagan represented some 82,000 Holocaust
victims and family members (many of whom later accused him of negligence
), suing governments and companies in Germany
and Austria
based on the Alien Tort Claims Act.
. He ask ČEZ
and Westinghouse
companies for projects and others materials, and he threatened by trial and put some next ultimates. After 2 years, he ended his activities without any results.
, Aetna
, Union Pacific Railroad
, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Lehman Brothers
, accusing the companies to have "unjustly enriched (themselves) through profits earned either directly or indirectly from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery between 1619 and 1865, as well as post-Emancipation slavery through the 1960s". In January 2004 Judge Charles R Norgle dismissed the lawsuit because Fagan failed to establish a clear link between plaintiffs and the companies.
, the "maverick lawyer" attempted to file a $50 billion class action lawsuit against Swiss UBS and Credit Suisse
and U.S. based Citicorp Inc. for providing funds to the South African apartheid government during 1985 and 1993. Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruedi Christen dismissed the lawsuit with the following words: "It's another unjust attack against Switzerland," an opinion shared in Switzerland, where citizens told Fagan to "Go home!" and "Wash your dirty linen elsewhere", when he held a news conference on Zurich's Paradeplatz, home of the two biggest banks of Switzerland: Credit Suisse and UBS.
, Sasol
Ltd., which supplies about 44 percent of South Africa's motor fuel, and Fluor Corporation, a California-based engineering company, claiming that the companies profited from South Africa's racial discrimination policies that ended in 1994. The claims were dismissed by a federal district judge in November 2004, Fagan was not allowed to represent the case.
for insuring ships used in the slave trade in the 1700-1800s. Fagan's interest in financial compensation was immediately criticized by Kofi Mawuli Klu, the Chair of the Pan-Afrikan Taskforce for Internationalist Dialogue (PATFID); the Anti-Slavery Abolitionist Heritage Learning movement and member of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE): "We have to make sure that the focus does not shift from the broad, deeper understanding of reparations to just one of financial compensation, ... We see action for reparations more as an educational issue of bringing masses of people into the fight against racism."
in Kaprun
, Austria
, which killed 155 people, but in August 2007, Southern District of New York Judge Shira Scheindlin
disqualified Fagan from representing the plaintiffs, after noting that Fagan, who had filed for personal bankruptcy
, had a personal interest in the litigation's outcome and made false representations to the court. Scheindlin slapped the attorney with a $5,000 fine. Fagan continues to seek winnings [2009] in this case with a former partner in the case that through their failed Florida partnership representing victims in the Louis J Pearlman fraud, allowed Fagan to vindictively sell his services to victims of that fraud. Fagan eventually deserted these clients after severely hurting their chances of any recovery due to his obstructionist and disingenuous involvement in their cases.
victims. The lawsuit was directed against the Thai government, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the French hotel group Sofitel
, blaming them for insufficient quake and tsunami warnings.
for $30 million damages, on behalf of two inhabitants of the Romania
n village of Glod, Dâmbovita for human rights violations. He plans to submit lawsuits in New York and Florida state courts, as well as in Frankfurt
, Germany
. Fagan said that he hoped to "teach Hollywood a very expensive lesson." The lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in a hearing in early December 2006 on the grounds that the charges were too vague to stand up in court. Fagan plans to refile.
In 1998 Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of Federal District Court dismissed the federal lawsuit of Mr. Ortiz, noting that Mr. Fagan, his attorney, had "failed to prosecute" it for three years and had ignored court orders. The lawsuit of Mr. Ortiz, then a 49-year-old truck driver involved in a traffic accident, started in 1994, when Mr. Fagan filed a $35 million lawsuit on his behalf in federal court in Brooklyn and State Supreme Court, but Edward Fagan failed to pursue the case after 1996. Since then Edward Fagan did not even see or speak with his client.
In another case Mr. Fagan failed to submit a claim for Mr. Tom Giron to a New York state fund that compensates victims of uninsured motorists. Mr Giron was struck and severely injured in 1992 by a car reported stolen, but did not receive any compensation, because, according to Jeffrey Rubinton, the fund's president, a claim was never filed and "its records showed that such an action had not been pursued and that the statute of limitations on making one had long expired." Another client, Offer Salmoni, won a $167,000 malpractice judgment against Mr. Fagan, because Mr. Fagan repeatedly failed to make court appearances in his eviction case, and so the statute of limitations expired without refiling.
New Jersey ethics officials filed a misconduct complaint before a grievance committee against Mr. Fagan on behalf of Diane Gibbons, another former client, who complained that Mr. Fagan failed to submit required papers in her personal injury case, leading to its dismissal. During the proceedings Mr. Fagan was forced to admit that he failed to withdraw from suits that he could not pursue, excusing himself with the words: "I was in over my head a lot of the time."
reported in October 2005 that Ed Fagan was engaged in a legal investigation about published accusations and sexual contacts with underage prostitutes in Austria. Austrian print and broadcast media reported that the state prosecutor in Vienna
is looking into Fagan's contact with a prostitution ring that involved underage girls from Eastern Europe
. Fagan confirmed the sexual contacts with a 17-year-old Lithuania
n prostitute named Inga but claims that he believed the prostitute to be at least 22 years old. Although prostitution is regulated in Austria, it is still illegal to knowingly hire a prostitute under the age of 18. The maximum sentence, according to § 207b (Sexual abuses of adolescents) of the Austrian Strafgesetzbuch
(Criminal law
) is 3 years of imprisonment.
On December 11, 2008, in the "Matter of Edward D. Fagan, M-2732, M-3148, M-3193", a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, 1st Department, ruled, that Fagan's failure to pay sanctions and money owed to Bank Austria, his "pattern of prior sanctions for unprofessional conduct" and his "lack of contrition" made him unfit to practice law. Fagans will be "stricken from the roll of attorneys and counselors-at-law in the State of New York." The following day, Fagan was disbarred in New York for failing to pay a court fine and fees due to Bank Austria.
Following the 2008 recommendation of a special ethics master the state disciplinary board of New Jersey decided in January 2009, that Fagan should be disbarred and banned from practicing in the state because he misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars entrusted to him by Holocaust survivors.
In 2005 Fagan had 28 outstanding court awards and liens of more than $4 million against him and his firm, Fagan & Associates, including three from clients who alleged that he neglected their cases. In February 2007 he filed for protection under federal bankruptcy laws in Tampa, Florida. Court documents are said to show that he owes about $9.4 million to creditors.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
reparations
Reparation (legal)
In jurisprudence, reparation is replenishment of a previously inflicted loss by the criminal to the victim. Monetary restitution is a common form of reparation...
lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
who was punished by the Supreme Court for his conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. Edward Fagan was disbarred in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
for failing to pay court fines and fees and for stealing client money and escrow trust funds from Holocaust survivors.
Background
Fagan was born in Harlingen, TexasHarlingen, Texas
Harlingen is a city in Cameron County in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, United States, about from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The city covers more than , and is the second largest city in Cameron County and the sixth largest in the Rio Grande Valley...
. He grew up in a Conservative Jewish
Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...
home in San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
and has two children. Prior to embarking on his legal career, he traveled to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
to take part in the Yom Kippur War
Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War , also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria...
. After returning to the US, he enrolled in Cardozo School of Law and graduated in 1980. He initially worked as a personal injury lawyer
Personal injury lawyer
A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal representation to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person, company, government agency, or other entity....
, then worked with a large law firm, representing corporate defendants, before he started an exploration club for the wealthy in the 1980s, allowing rich customers to visit exotic locations, entertained and accompanied by scientists and environmentalists. A nonprofit venture of the business, the Odyssoe Foundation, was created in 1991, but collapsed with the entire enterprise.
Clients and partners have stated publicly and in court, that Fagan often failed to represent the interest of his clients, he generally takes on "too many clients", "vastly outstrips his resources", and is "often absent for the legal fight". According to Burt Neuborne
Burt Neuborne
Burt Neuborne is a nationally renowned civil liberties defender. Professor Neuborne has acted as lead counsel in the recent Holocaust Litigation against the Swiss Banks. A former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, he is currently on the faculty of New York University...
, law professor at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, who had worked with Mr. Fagan before breaking with him, "Mr. Fagan's filing in the Swiss banks case was so inadequate that a judge asked him to rewrite it. ... This was an ordinary man who got swept up in issues that were bigger than he was."
1990 Holocaust lawsuits against Swiss banks
In the 1990s, Fagan filed lawsuits against SwissSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
bank
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...
s which had refused to repay money that belonged to Holocaust victims. The banks in question settled the claims outside of court, resulting in a payout of US$1.25 billion.
According to news reports Ed Fagan even held up the final formal signing of the German slave labor settlement because he wanted more money for himself. While several hundred people and German and American representatives waited, Ed Fagan, still wearing an ABCNEWS 20/20 microphone, could be heard "haggling over the fees, and then boasting of his success". He was recorded saying, "I got the legal fees up, ... We did great, we did great we just got another, we just got some more money.”
Amongst Fagan's many critics is New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
law professor Burt Neuborne, who said on record: "We essentially worked around him, ... I mean, he was, he was there, but, but he played, if I tell you zero, I mean zero role in developing the legal theory, in presenting the legal theory, and in participating as a lawyer." Neuborne, a leading human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
lawyer, believes it's time to set the record straight:
"It didn’t surprise me at the last minute that the only lawyer, the only lawyer that thought he could hold this deal up would be Ed Fagan. Because that’s the barometer of how much you care about yourself, and how much you care about those victims," says Neuborne. "I think it is appropriate to, to tell the truth about him. One hundred percent of his activity in this case, including the press activity, it was designed to get his name there so other people would sign up with him, so he could get more and more and more and more people in the fold and then show up in court and say 'I am the top lawyer cause I have got the most clients.'"
In 1998, Mrs. Gizella Weisshaus, the named plaintiff in the lawsuit against Swiss banks, opted out of that historic settlement because she felt that her attorneys were more interested in paying themselves millions of dollars, even before some of the survivors had received any money. On April 8, 1998 Mrs. Gizella Weisshauss filed an attorney ethics complaint, claiming that Edward D. Fagan, her lawyer at the time, held back $82,583.04 belonging to her from the estate of her deceased cousin Jack Oestreicher. Hal R. Lieberman, Esq. from Departmental Disciplinary Committee, Supreme Court, Appellate Division, responded on May 6, 1998, that in this "ongoing criminal proceeding" the outcome of the disciplinary investigation should be awaited.
In 2000, Fagan represented some 82,000 Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
victims and family members (many of whom later accused him of negligence
Negligence
Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...
), suing governments and companies in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
based on the Alien Tort Claims Act.
2000 Temelín Nuclear Power Station
2000 Fagan started cooperation with Austrian anti-atom organizations in their fight again czech Temelín Nuclear Power StationTemelín Nuclear Power Station
Temelín Nuclear Power Station is located near Temelín, a small village in the Czech Republic. Temelín NPP is owned by ČEZ Group, which employs 1000 workers at this site. The adjacent castle Vysoký Hrádek serves as an information centre.-History:...
. He ask ČEZ
CEZ
CEZ stands for:* one of Falconbridge Ltd.'s refineries* a Czech news channel* IATA airport code for Cortez Municipal Airport* CEZ Group, a Czech energy company...
and Westinghouse
Westinghouse
Westinghouse may refer to:In current companies:*Westinghouse Licensing, the brand management division of CBS Corporation, and its licensees:**Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, providing nuclear power related services....
companies for projects and others materials, and he threatened by trial and put some next ultimates. After 2 years, he ended his activities without any results.
2002 Slavery class action lawsuit
In April 2002 Ed Fagan filed a class action lawsuit against 18 companies, including FleetBoston, CSX CorporationCSX Corporation
CSX Corporation was formed in 1980 by the merger of Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries and eventually merged the various railroads owned by those predecessors into a single line that became known as CSX Transportation. Based in Richmond, Virginia, USA after the merger, in 2003...
, Aetna
Aetna
Aetna, Inc. is an American health insurance company, providing a range of traditional and consumer directed health care insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, group life, long-term care, and disability plans, and medical management...
, Union Pacific Railroad
Union Pacific Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....
, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
, accusing the companies to have "unjustly enriched (themselves) through profits earned either directly or indirectly from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery between 1619 and 1865, as well as post-Emancipation slavery through the 1960s". In January 2004 Judge Charles R Norgle dismissed the lawsuit because Fagan failed to establish a clear link between plaintiffs and the companies.
2002 Apartheid lawsuit against Swiss and U.S. banks
According to news reports by CNNCNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, the "maverick lawyer" attempted to file a $50 billion class action lawsuit against Swiss UBS and Credit Suisse
Credit Suisse
The Credit Suisse Group AG is a Swiss multinational financial services company headquartered in Zurich, with more than 250 branches in Switzerland and operations in more than 50 countries.-History:...
and U.S. based Citicorp Inc. for providing funds to the South African apartheid government during 1985 and 1993. Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruedi Christen dismissed the lawsuit with the following words: "It's another unjust attack against Switzerland," an opinion shared in Switzerland, where citizens told Fagan to "Go home!" and "Wash your dirty linen elsewhere", when he held a news conference on Zurich's Paradeplatz, home of the two biggest banks of Switzerland: Credit Suisse and UBS.
2003 Apartheid lawsuit against Anglo American
In 2003 Fagan and South African law firm Ngcebetsha Madlanga Attorneys attempted to sue Anglo American, the word's second-biggest mining company, diamond producer De BeersDe Beers
De Beers is a family of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea...
, Sasol
Sasol
Sasol Ltd. is a South African company involved in mining, energy, chemicals and synfuels. In particular, they produce petrol and diesel profitably from coal and natural gas using Fischer-Tropsch process...
Ltd., which supplies about 44 percent of South Africa's motor fuel, and Fluor Corporation, a California-based engineering company, claiming that the companies profited from South Africa's racial discrimination policies that ended in 1994. The claims were dismissed by a federal district judge in November 2004, Fagan was not allowed to represent the case.
2004 Artwork lawsuit against Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG
In 2004, Fagan filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan for a non-existent group called the Association of Holocaust Victims for Restitution of Artwork & Masterpieces (AHVRAM) against Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG and other European corporate, governmental and financial institutions for $6.8 billion. The lawsuit alleged the theft of artworks and other property during World War II's Holocaust, but was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Shirley Wohl Kram on Aug. 19, 2005, because Fagan failed to state any basis for federal court jurisdiction of the "frivolous" and "bad faith" lawsuit. Kram noted that the "plaintiff organization AHVRAM did not exist," Fagan's "lack of preparation and professionalism, his 'glaringly inadequate filings,' and the fact that he deceived the court". Fagan's failure to pay the more than $350,000 in fines and litigation costs to the Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG led to his bankruptcy and disbarment.2004 Slave trade lawsuit against Lloyd's of London
Claiming that the descendants of black American slaves still suffer, Fagan sued the UK's oldest insurance firm Lloyd's of LondonLloyd's of London
Lloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...
for insuring ships used in the slave trade in the 1700-1800s. Fagan's interest in financial compensation was immediately criticized by Kofi Mawuli Klu, the Chair of the Pan-Afrikan Taskforce for Internationalist Dialogue (PATFID); the Anti-Slavery Abolitionist Heritage Learning movement and member of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE): "We have to make sure that the focus does not shift from the broad, deeper understanding of reparations to just one of financial compensation, ... We see action for reparations more as an educational issue of bringing masses of people into the fight against racism."
2005 Kaprun disaster lawsuit
Fagan attempted to represent the plaintiffs in a suit brought by relatives of six Americans who died in mountain railway disasterKaprun disaster
The Kaprun disaster was a fire that occurred in an ascending railway car in the tunnel of the Gletscherbahn 2 railway in Kaprun, Austria, on 11 November 2000. The disaster claimed the lives of 155 people, leaving 12 survivors from the burning car...
in Kaprun
Kaprun
Kaprun is a small alpine village in the district of Zell am See in the state of Salzburg, Austria. At the foot of the Kitzsteinhorn Glacier, it is a year round sports centre, with a population of 2,903 ....
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, which killed 155 people, but in August 2007, Southern District of New York Judge Shira Scheindlin
Shira Scheindlin
Shira A. Scheindlin is a United States District Court judge for the Southern District of New York. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on July 28, 1994, to a seat vacated by Louis J...
disqualified Fagan from representing the plaintiffs, after noting that Fagan, who had filed for personal bankruptcy
Personal bankruptcy
Personal bankruptcy is a procedure which, in certain jurisdictions, allows an individual to declare bankruptcy. In other jurisdictions, bankruptcies are reserved for corporations.-Canada:...
, had a personal interest in the litigation's outcome and made false representations to the court. Scheindlin slapped the attorney with a $5,000 fine. Fagan continues to seek winnings [2009] in this case with a former partner in the case that through their failed Florida partnership representing victims in the Louis J Pearlman fraud, allowed Fagan to vindictively sell his services to victims of that fraud. Fagan eventually deserted these clients after severely hurting their chances of any recovery due to his obstructionist and disingenuous involvement in their cases.
2005 Indian Ocean tsunami victims lawsuit
In 2005, he initiated a lawsuit on behalf of 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake...
victims. The lawsuit was directed against the Thai government, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the French hotel group Sofitel
Sofitel
Sofitel is a luxury hotel chain managed by Accor, which opened its first property in Strasbourg in 1964. Its first overseas opening in Minneapolis, USA was in 1974. In 1995 Sofitel had 100 hotels in 40 countries and employed 12500 people....
, blaming them for insufficient quake and tsunami warnings.
2006 Borat lawsuit
In 2006, Fagan initiated legal proceedings, suing the makers of the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of KazakhstanBorat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, often referred to simply as Borat, is a 2006 mockumentary comedy film directed by Larry Charles and distributed by 20th Century Fox...
for $30 million damages, on behalf of two inhabitants of the Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n village of Glod, Dâmbovita for human rights violations. He plans to submit lawsuits in New York and Florida state courts, as well as in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Fagan said that he hoped to "teach Hollywood a very expensive lesson." The lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in a hearing in early December 2006 on the grounds that the charges were too vague to stand up in court. Fagan plans to refile.
Malpractice
Ed Fagan has been accused of abandoning personal injury clients in favor of the more lucrative Holocaust reparations cases. One personal injury client sued Fagan, and won a $3.2 million malpractice award. Fagan has also been accused of having wasted over $500,000 of his clients' money.In 1998 Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of Federal District Court dismissed the federal lawsuit of Mr. Ortiz, noting that Mr. Fagan, his attorney, had "failed to prosecute" it for three years and had ignored court orders. The lawsuit of Mr. Ortiz, then a 49-year-old truck driver involved in a traffic accident, started in 1994, when Mr. Fagan filed a $35 million lawsuit on his behalf in federal court in Brooklyn and State Supreme Court, but Edward Fagan failed to pursue the case after 1996. Since then Edward Fagan did not even see or speak with his client.
In another case Mr. Fagan failed to submit a claim for Mr. Tom Giron to a New York state fund that compensates victims of uninsured motorists. Mr Giron was struck and severely injured in 1992 by a car reported stolen, but did not receive any compensation, because, according to Jeffrey Rubinton, the fund's president, a claim was never filed and "its records showed that such an action had not been pursued and that the statute of limitations on making one had long expired." Another client, Offer Salmoni, won a $167,000 malpractice judgment against Mr. Fagan, because Mr. Fagan repeatedly failed to make court appearances in his eviction case, and so the statute of limitations expired without refiling.
New Jersey ethics officials filed a misconduct complaint before a grievance committee against Mr. Fagan on behalf of Diane Gibbons, another former client, who complained that Mr. Fagan failed to submit required papers in her personal injury case, leading to its dismissal. During the proceedings Mr. Fagan was forced to admit that he failed to withdraw from suits that he could not pursue, excusing himself with the words: "I was in over my head a lot of the time."
Sexual conduct investigation
The Jewish Daily The ForwardThe Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
reported in October 2005 that Ed Fagan was engaged in a legal investigation about published accusations and sexual contacts with underage prostitutes in Austria. Austrian print and broadcast media reported that the state prosecutor in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
is looking into Fagan's contact with a prostitution ring that involved underage girls from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. Fagan confirmed the sexual contacts with a 17-year-old Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n prostitute named Inga but claims that he believed the prostitute to be at least 22 years old. Although prostitution is regulated in Austria, it is still illegal to knowingly hire a prostitute under the age of 18. The maximum sentence, according to § 207b (Sexual abuses of adolescents) of the Austrian Strafgesetzbuch
Strafgesetzbuch
Strafgesetzbuch is the German name for Penal Code and is abbreviated to StGB.- History :In Germany the Strafgesetzbuch goes back to the Penal Code of the German Empire passed in the year 1871 which was largely identical to the Penal Code of the North German Confederation.This Reichsstrafgesetzbuch ...
(Criminal law
Criminal law
Criminal law, is the body of law that relates to crime. It might be defined as the body of rules that defines conduct that is not allowed because it is held to threaten, harm or endanger the safety and welfare of people, and that sets out the punishment to be imposed on people who do not obey...
) is 3 years of imprisonment.
Disbarment in New Jersey and New York
In 2005 Fagan became the subject of an ethics investigation by the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics, accusing him of "knowing misappropriation" of client money. On April 2, 2007, Appellate Division, 1st Department held that Fagan had "violated a number of disciplinary rules prohibiting an attorney from disregarding a court's rulings, engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, misrepresentation or deceit, and acquiring a proprietary interest in the subject of the litigation."On December 11, 2008, in the "Matter of Edward D. Fagan, M-2732, M-3148, M-3193", a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, 1st Department, ruled, that Fagan's failure to pay sanctions and money owed to Bank Austria, his "pattern of prior sanctions for unprofessional conduct" and his "lack of contrition" made him unfit to practice law. Fagans will be "stricken from the roll of attorneys and counselors-at-law in the State of New York." The following day, Fagan was disbarred in New York for failing to pay a court fine and fees due to Bank Austria.
Following the 2008 recommendation of a special ethics master the state disciplinary board of New Jersey decided in January 2009, that Fagan should be disbarred and banned from practicing in the state because he misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars entrusted to him by Holocaust survivors.
Bankruptcy
Fagan's finances and businesses started to collapse in the 1990s. According to public records and newspaper articles Fagan began to owe large amounts of federal income taxes. In 1996 the Nynex Corporation filed a $228,000 lawsuit against Odyssoe in a New Jersey court for unpaid advertisements services, a bill that was, according to a spokeswoman for Verizon, the successor to Nynex, not even paid in 2000. Facing an eviction proceeding for unpaid rent, Ed Fagan was forced in 1997 to abandon his offices and rent space from a law firm in the World Trade Center.In 2005 Fagan had 28 outstanding court awards and liens of more than $4 million against him and his firm, Fagan & Associates, including three from clients who alleged that he neglected their cases. In February 2007 he filed for protection under federal bankruptcy laws in Tampa, Florida. Court documents are said to show that he owes about $9.4 million to creditors.
See also
- List of disbarments in the United States
- Christoph MeiliChristoph MeiliChristoph Meili is a Swiss whistleblower and Swiss-American security professional.In early 1997, Meili worked as a night guard at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich, Switzerland...
- Holocaust industry
External links
- Case of Ed Fagan
- Holocaust Lawyer Fights Accusation He Hired Underage Austrian Hooker
- Con Man and Snake Oil Salesman Ed Fagan Tries To Shut Down Parentadvocates.org. Lewenstein Serves Subpoena on Gizella Weisshaus