This’ll make for an awkward Thanksgiving. A high-powered Manhattan lawyer has filed a $3 million libel suit — against his daughter.
Richard Fischbein says his little girl, Beth Fischbein-Bodner, essentially accused him in a court filing of “dishonesty, irresponsibility, and a lack of professional ethics,” and that the 43-year-old is old enough to know better.
Fischbein, founding partner of the politically connected firm Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner and Harding, says his kid smeared him by asking for an accounting of her trust fund, which he supposedly controls.
Fischbein-Bodner said her dad hadn’t been forthcoming with information about the trust, which she was supposed to collect back in 1990, and asked a judge for an accounting. In the filing, she said her father’s behavior had given her “concerns about waste,” loss of assets, “and self- dealing.”
Fischbein said she’d been getting regular bank statements about the trust, and called her concerns “irrelevant, impertinent and totally gratuitous.”
He also portrayed his daughter as ungrateful.
His suit says he divorced Beth’s mother in 1969, and even though he was obligated to pay only $50 a month in child support, he shelled out cash for private school, summer camps, and college and law school, as well as “luxury automobiles.”
His firm also hired her fresh out of law school.
He said he needs $3 million in punitive damages because he “has been greatly injured in his character, [and] has suffered substantial loss and damage in his profession.”
Late yesterday, Fischbein, who once sued a restaurant for $7 million in a dispute over a $354 tip, said he might be willing to relent.
His spokesman said the “family matter” will “be resolved amicably.”