Ed Fagan

In the 1995, Fagan filed lawsuits against Swiss banks 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[6] 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.”[6]

Amongst Fagan's many critics was New York University law professor Burt Neuborne, who had 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."[6] Neuborne, a leading human rights lawyer, believed that it was 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. 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."[6]

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.[7]

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.

In April 2002 Ed Fagan filed a class action lawsuit against eighteen companies, including FleetBoston, CSX Corporation, 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.[8]

According to news reports by CNN, 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.[9]

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 Beers, 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.[10][11] The claims were dismissed by a federal district judge in November 2004, Fagan was not allowed to represent the case.[12]

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.[13] The lawsuit alleged the theft of artworks and other property during World War II's Holocaust, but was dismissed by US 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".[14] 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.[2]

Claiming that the descendants of black American slaves still suffer, Fagan sued the UK's oldest insurance market Lloyd's of London 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."[15]

Fagan attempted to represent the plaintiffs in a suit brought by relatives of six Americans who died in mountain railway disaster 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.[2] 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.

In 2005, he initiated a lawsuit on behalf of 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake 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.[16]

In 2006, Fagan initiated legal proceedings, suing the makers of the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan for $30 million in damages, on behalf of two inhabitants of the Romanian village of Glod, Dâmbovita, for human rights violations. He planned to submit lawsuits in New York and Florida state courts, as well as in Frankfurt, Germany.[17] Fagan said that he hoped to "teach Hollywood a very expensive lesson". The lawsuit was thrown out by US 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 planned to refile.[18]