The Manhattan night nurse of the late copper heiress Huguette Clark is trying to scuttle a settlement reached last autumn over Clark’s $300 million fortune.
Geraldine Coffey claims she was locked out of “secret” negotiations in the deal, which left her with no inheritance, according to papers filed in Manhattan Surrogate Court last week.
Unlike Clark’s daytime nurse, Hadassah Peri, who got $31 million in gifts from the heiress during her lifetime, Coffey got a comparatively measly $1 million.
Coffey, an Irish immigrant who now lives in a prewar doorman building called The Gatsby on East 96th Street, claims Clark promised to “provide for her” after she died.
But the nurse was never written into Clark’s will.
The September settlement cut Clark’s attorney, Wallace Bock, and accountant, Irving Kamsler, out of $1 million in gifts in exchange for absolving them of future litigation.
But Coffey, who is being sued separately to return gifts that included $385,000 to buy Upper East Side condos and $85,000 for tuition for her children, has to sign off on the deal. She’s balking, claiming Bock and Kamsler, are “intertwined” in allegations that she pressured the elderly heiress into draining her fortune.
Coffey made $130,000 a year, serving Clark for 20 years until her 20111 death at 104.
She often worked 12 hours a day for the childless Clark, who was an eccentric, reclusive daughter of railroad baron, copper king and former Montana Sen. William Clark.
But Coffey told author Bill Dedman in his best-selling biography, “Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune,” that her patient was largely self-sufficient.
“Huguette cut her own hair, bathed herself, and was so healthy that often ,there was no need to take her temperature,” Coffey told Dedman.
“There was very little nursing to do,” she admitted in the interview.
But John Morken, the attorney for Clark’s relatives — and now for the estate — paints Coffey as a money-hungry staffer who put her own needs ahead of her employer’s health.
“While purportedly caring for Mrs. Clark, Geraldine repeatedly pressured her patient to make ‘gifts’ to and for the benefit of her and her family,” Morken alleges in the suit.
Clark’s doctor said Coffey caused his patient “anxiety and distress” with repeated nagging for a $7.5 million apartment.
“At the time Mrs. Clark was reported in nurse’s notes to be ‘confused during the night’ and ‘delusional,’ ” Morken says.
Coffey vigorously denies the allegations in court papers.
She adds that the coercion charges are “intertwined” with previous allegations against Bock and Kamsler, who a court-appointed attorney said “had a duty to prevent Madame Clark from draining her fortune by giving gifts to her employees.”
The parties are due back in court this week.
Coffey did not return calls for comment.