By Nathaniel
Popper "I've never worked harder. I've never been more successful. I've never been prouder of my legal work," Neuborne said.
Top lawyer in Holocaust restitution cases gets flak over
fee request By Nathaniel
Popper
The most respected legal strategist in the Swiss
bank dispute has come under attack from other lawyers after requesting more than
$4 million in fees - a sum that would make him the highest paid attorney to work
on the case.
The lawyer making the request, New York University law professor Burt Neuborne,
gained respect and prominence for refusing to take any fees for his work in
achieving the $1.25 billion settlement in 1998 with the Swiss banks accused of
withholding Holocaust-era deposits. More than a dozen lawyers litigated the
case, several of whom told the Forward that they assumed Neuborne had continued
to work pro bono.
Neuborne's application for fees,
filed December 19, is for work he has done since 1999 in administering
the settlement fund as lead settlement counsel. He was appointed to the
position by the federal judge in the case, Edward Korman.
In the fee application submitted to Korman, Neuborne requested $4.1
million for 8,178 hours of work since 1999. Together, the other lawyers
who worked on the case were awarded $5.3 million.
Lawyers seeking fees in Holocaust restitution and reparation cases have
faced constant opposition because of the widespread belief that any
money recovered should go to Holocaust survivors. Any request from
Neuborne was certain to draw scrutiny because he has been held up as the
exemplar of a public-minded pro bono attorney. In fact, Korman asked him
to help decide on fees for the other lawyers, and Neuborne's current
request faces opposition from those who expressed unhappiness with
Neuborne's earlier recommendations.
Philadelphia attorney Robert Swift, who was on the executive committee
of attorneys in the case along with Neuborne, filed a legal document
December 29, asking the judge to refuse Neuborne's request. "Prof.
Neuborne neither informed me that he intended to seek a fee during the
administration of the settlement nor sought to engage the legal skills
of me or most other settlement class counsel who were acting pro bono,"
Swift wrote.
Swift was not paid for work he did since the settlement, but he did
receive $1.2 million in fees for his work in achieving the agreement. He
had requested greater compensation, which was rejected on Neuborne's
recommendation.
In contrast to Swift, a number of other lawyers involved in the case,
including those who worked pro bono, supported Neuborne's request and
praised his efforts since the settlement.
"The only person who could seriously challenge this either hasn't been
paying attention or has a bone to pick," said Morris Ratner, a lawyer
from the original case, whose law firm donated his fees to Columbia
University's law school. "Burt single-handedly implemented a
billion-dollar settlement. What he is seeking in fees is totally
modest."
Michael Bazyler, a legal historian who has written about the restitution
movement, said that the work Neuborne has done since the settlement was
more arduous than the work required to reach the settlement in the first
place. "The heavy-duty work has come during the distribution of the
funds," Bazyler said. "If anybody deserves fees in the Swiss case, it's
Burt Neuborne."
The $1.25 billion won from the Swiss banks is still being distributed.
Neuborne estimated that about $800 million already has been disbursed.
The biggest continuing dispute is how to spend any unclaimed money.
Korman, the judge, has decided to distribute most of the remaining funds
to needy survivors in the former Soviet Union rather than to survivors
in America.
Neuborne has drawn the ire of some American survivor organizations for
supporting Korman's decision. These groups also expressed unhappiness
when hearing of Neuborne's fee request.
"He was yelling all the time that he was working pro bono," said Leo
Rechter, the president of the National Association of Jewish Holocaust
Survivors. "If it was up to us, we would have said that we didn't want
his services."
While Neuborne received nothing for his work in achieving the Swiss
settlement, he was awarded $4.4 million for his work in a separate case
against German industries, which was settled in 1999. At the time, he
said he was only accepting the money because it didn't come out of the
survivors' pot.
Neuborne's new fees would come from funds for survivors. Neuborne said
this fee was fundamentally different from the one for the German case
because it was for administering funds rather than for representing the
survivors in court.
"There's a big difference between defending the victims' rights and
performing a service for them once you get the money," Neuborne told the
Forward. "It's like running an enormous business that is under legal
attack all the time."
In his petition, Neuborne said he represented the settlement fund in 29
legal matters and increased the value of the fund by at least $35
million. Among Neuborne's actions, he successfully lobbied to make any
payouts to American survivors tax-free. He also successfully argued that
the Swiss banks should pay millions of dollars in interest on the money
held since the agreement.
In opposing Neuborne, Swift pointed out that on at least three days
Neuborne billed for more than 24 hours. Neuborne said that happened
because he billed any hours to the day in which he started projects, and
he frequently worked through the night.
Even among attorneys who praised Neuborne's work, a few said they had
not realized that Neuborne would receive compensation as lead settlement
counsel.
"My assumption was that he was continuing to work pro bono," said Martin
Mendelsohn, a Washington lawyer who worked on the case.
Neuborne said that when the judge initially asked him to be the lead
settlement counsel, he had declined the job and accepted only after the
judge said he would be compensated. Korman told the Forward that he
could not comment on a pending case but said he would hold a hearing on
the matter.
The hearing could create a difficult situation for Korman, because he
will have to preside over a matter in which he is personally involved.
Neuborne said that he has lunch with Korman every month to discuss
progress on the case, and that the two have worked closely, in the face
of strenuous opposition, to administer the fund.
"I've never worked harder. I've never been more successful. I've never
been prouder of my legal work," Neuborne said.
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