Hudson News heir James Cohen — the star witness in the six-month- long inheritance battle against his niece Samantha Perelman over his late father’s Hudson News fortune — was reduced to sobs as he recalled his father, Robert’s belly laugh and the torture he claims his ex-brother-in-law, Revlon Billionaire Ronald Perelman, put his father through in the last few years of his life.
Cohen appeared to tear up as he finished his direct examination in a Hackensack courtroom yesterday when he recalled the last time his father laughed — at a joke he’d told 40 years ago.
“He obviously loved his own joke, even though it was 40 years old,” Cohen said, referring to a crack by his father about James Cohen’s poor tennis skills.
“That was the last time, I,” he said, pausing and letting out a sob, “I heard him laugh.”
Cohen’s dramatic tale was more about his father’s mental capacity before he died than about the bond between the two. Samantha and her Revlon-billionaire father, Ronald — the ex-husband of the late Page Six columnist Claudia Cohen, who died in 2007 — have contested Robert Cohen’s wills after 2004 that squeezed Samantha out. They charged that Robert’s deteriorating health, caused by a Parkinson’s-like disease, left him incompetent and vulnerable to James’ influence.
Cohen highlighted his father’s ability to communicate by showing excitement in his eyes, jerking his back in displeasure and blinking to say yes or no when he could no longer speak. The Hudson News founder died in 2012 at 86.
Robert Cohen detested Ronald Perelman in the last few years of his life for demanding to see Hudson News’ financial statements and for filing a lawsuit in 2008 that questioned his mental state, Cohen testified. The latter action got his dad so riled up he hissed, “F— him!” the son said i court.
“He looked up and his hands were like this,” Cohen testified, mimicking his wheelchair bound father’s reaction to a request by Ronald for his financials.
“And in a rough voice, he said, ‘F expletive him.’”
The suit took a toll on his dad, James said, recalling that he “was physically exhausted, he was sweating, he was physically affected,” after a long deposition.
Perelman’s camp fired back, saying he had the right to take action to protect Claudia Cohen’s estate.
“As executor of Claudia Cohen’s estate, Ronald Perelman had an obligation to take action to recover assets that were improperly diverted by Jimmy Cohen,” Perelman’s spokesperson Christine Taylor said in a statement.
“Cohen seems not to understand that people do have a right to question his actions — especially when they were self-serving and deprived his sister and niece of the inheritance to which they were otherwise entitled.”