The heirs of an 80-year-old widow who had been hit with a $44 million legal fee for five months of work by her attorneys will only have to pay about $3 million, a state appeals court ruled yesterday.
Alice Lawrence, wife of Manhattan real-estate magnate Sylvan Lawrence, died in 2008, three years into a bruising battle with her longtime law firm, Graubard Miller, over the exorbitant bill.
Law firm Graubard Miller’s take was almost half of the $111 million settlement its attorneys won for Alice, who was fighting her late husband’s brother over a $1 billion office building empire.
Alice’s three grown children, recipients of her estate, claimed their mother changed her contract from an hourly rate to a contingency fee percentage while she was infirm.
“The evidence shows that under the contingency arrangement, she would receive the ‘lion’s share’ of any recovery,” the ruling states.
The Appellate Division found that had the firm billed for the 3,795 hours of work for the settlement, its hourly rate would have been a whopping $11,000.
“We’re delighted for the clients and we think the court got it exactly right,” said Daniel Kornstein, the estate’s lawyer. Alice’s son Richard Lawrence and her two daughters, Suzanne Lawrence DeChamplain and Marta Jo Lawrence, are in their 60s and live in Connecticut and Florida.