Lawyers split $52 million in Nazi slave-labor case

Jane Fritsch / New York Times 15jun01

New York -- Lawyers who represent Nazi-era slave laborers split more than $52 million in legal fees yesterday for their work on a case that will bring Holocaust victims $5,000 to $7,500 each.

Eleven lawyers were awarded more than $1 million each, with the biggest share, $6.3 million, going to Melvyn I. Weiss of the Manhattan law firm of Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach. Michael D. Hausfeld of Washington was awarded $5 million, and Burt Neuborne, a professor at the New York University School of Law, was awarded $4.4 million.

The lawyers, 51 in all, were involved in a variety of suits filed on behalf of people forced to work by the Third Reich. Most victims are in their 70s or 80s. Many have died without receiving any money in the year since German companies and the German government set up a $4.5 billion fund to pay reparations. In return, the companies wanted assurances that they would be free from any future claims by Holocaust victims.

The payments have been held up by legal wrangling in the United States, where several suits against German companies remained open until last month, when they were dismissed. The German parliament is expected to remove the last obstacle to paying the victims and the lawyers by next month.

The lawyers are to be paid from a separate fund negotiated last year with the German Foundation, the organization in charge of distributing the reparation money.

"There are widely held views that, somehow, the lawyers in these cases made out like bandits at the expense of the Holocaust victims, which is grossly untrue," said E. Stuart Eizenstat, the American government's chief negotiator on the issue.

"It was the class-action suits that got the attention of German industry," Eizenstat said, adding that the lawyers were an integral part of the negotiations that led to the creation of the fund.

It was decided early on, Eizenstat said, that it would be unseemly to pay the lawyers the traditional contingency fee of one-third of the settlement amount. Instead, the lawyers agreed to split a pool of money amounting to 1 to 1.5 percent of the total.

Eizenstat said the fees were "both modest and fair."

Neuborne said he began working on the litigation in 1997 with no expectation of being paid. He said he was speechless when told his share of the fees.

"While the fees are, for me, more than I ever would have dreamed of, they are not particularly high," he said. "I worked as hard as I could. There wasn't a day in the last four years that I haven't worked hard on this case. I pushed as hard as I could, and the result is something nobody imagined."

Lawrence Kill of the Manhattan firm of Anderson, Kill & Olick said, "The lawyers sacrificed greatly here."

He was awarded $3.1 million.