Америкалық заңгердің қызметтен шеттелуі және даулы істері

American disbarred reparations lawyer
Edward Davis (Ed) Fagan (born October 20, 1952, Harlingen) is a former American reparations lawyer who was disbarred for his conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. Fagan raised in San Antonio, Texas, he participated in the Yom Kippur War in Israel. After graduating from Cardozo School of Law in 1980, he initially worked as a personal injury lawyer and later with a law firm representing corporate defendants. In the 1980s, he founded an exploration club for the wealthy, organizing trips to exotic locations accompanied by scientists and environmentalists. Fagan gained attention for filing lawsuits against Swiss banks in 1995, seeking reparations for Holocaust victims. Critics accused him of prioritizing personal gain and failing to adequately represent his clients. Fagan faced controversies in other cases, such as the 2002 slavery class action lawsuit and 2005 Kaprun disaster lawsuit. Fagan lost his license in both New York and New Jersey for failing to pay court fines, and stealing client money and escrow trust funds from Holocaust survivors, some of whom he represented in the 1996 98 World Jewish Congress initiated lawsuit against Swiss banks. Bankruptcy proceedings in 2007 revealed significant financial troubles, with debts said to be $9.4m.

Fagan was born in Harlingen, Texas, and raised in a Conservative Jewish After returning to the US, he enrolled in Cardozo School of Law and graduated in 1980. Clients and partners have stated publicly and in court that Fagan often failed to represent the interests of his clients, generally took on "too many clients", "vastly outstrip[ed] his resources" and was "often absent for the legal fight". According to Burt Neuborne, law professor at New York University, who had worked with Fagan before breaking with him, "Mr. Fagan's filing in the Swiss banks case was so inadequate that a judge asked him to rewrite it This was an ordinary man who got swept up in issues that were bigger than he was."

In April 2002, 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.

According to news reports by CNN, the "maverick lawyer" attempted to file a $50 billion class action lawsuit against Swiss based 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.

In 2003, Fagan and South African law firm Ngcebetsha Madlanga Attorneys attempted to sue Anglo American, the world's second biggest mining company, diamond producer De Beers, Sasol Ltd., which supplies about 44% 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. The claims were dismissed by a federal district judge in November 2004, and Fagan was not allowed to represent the case.

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. The lawsuit alleged the theft of artworks and other property during World War II's Holocaust, but was dismissed by U. S. District Court Judge Shirley Wohl Kram on August 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". Fagan's failure to pay the more than $350,000 (~$ in ) in fines and litigation costs to the Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG led to his bankruptcy and disbarment. sued Britain's Lloyd's of London for insuring slave ships involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Fagan's inclusion of demands for financial compensation in his lawsuit was criticized by Kofi Mawuli Klu, the chairman 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."

Fagan attempted to represent the plaintiffs in a suit brought by relatives of 6 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.

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 ) 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. Fagan said that he hoped to "teach Hollywood a very expensive lesson". The lawsuit was thrown out by U. S. 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.

Fagan has been accused of abandoning personal injury clients in favor of the more lucrative Holocaust reparations cases. One personal injury client sued Fagan, and won a $3.2 million malpractice award. Fagan has been accused of having wasted over $500,000 of his clients' money. In 1998, Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of Federal District Court dismissed the federal lawsuit of Mr. Ortiz, noting that Fagan, his attorney, had "failed to prosecute" it for three years and had ignored court orders. The lawsuit of Ortiz, then a 49 year old truck driver involved in a traffic accident, started in 1994, when Fagan filed a $35 million lawsuit on his behalf in federal court in Brooklyn and State Supreme Court, but Fagan failed to pursue the case after 1996. After that, Fagan did not see, visit, or speak with his client. that Fagan was engaged in a legal investigation about published accusations and sexual contacts with underage prostitutes in Austria. Austrian print and broadcast media reported that the state prosecutor in Vienna is looking into Fagan's contact with a prostitution ring that involved underage girls from Eastern Europe. Fagan confirmed the sexual contacts with a 17 year old Lithuanian prostitute named Inga but claims that he believed the prostitute to be at least 22 years old.

In 2005, Fagan became the subject of an ethics investigation by the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics, accusing him of "knowing misappropriation" of client money. On April 2, 2007, Appellate Division, 1st Department held that Fagan had "violated a number of disciplinary rules prohibiting an attorney from disregarding a court's rulings, engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, misrepresentation or deceit, and acquiring a proprietary interest in the subject of the litigation." In February 2007, he filed for protection under federal bankruptcy laws in Tampa, Florida. Court documents are said to show that he owes about $9.4 million to creditors.