For the past few years, lawyer and NYU professor Burt Neuborne has been battling to be paid for work on a $1.25 billion settlement from Swiss banks to Holocaust survivors. Even though a judge awarded Neuborne his fees last December, the conflict is far from over: Now Neuborne wants interest on his fees.
In 2005, Neuborne had submitted his time (8,000 hours!) on the case for payment, initially charging $5.7 million, which was later discounted to $4.1 million. Some survivors felt the figure was egregious so they refused to pay, and thus began a court battle, plus two outraged NY Times editorials (one in 2006 and one in 2007) - with Letter to the Editor responses from Neuborne and one of his colleagues. Neuborne argued:
" It was a grueling job that nobody else wanted, and that I have done faithfully and successfully for seven years. There has to be a special application of the rule that no good deed goes unpunished for someone to say that because I voluntarily gave up my fees for getting the settlement and that would be $10 million somehow I’m not allowed to be paid for seven years’ work in successfully carrying it out."
Last December, a court magistrate determined that Neuborne was owed $3.1 million. The Sun reports Neuborne has requested $299,419 in interest on the $3.1 million, noting that it took two years for him to be paid. A survivor in Queens Leo Richter told the Sun, "He's setting a precedent on greed," to which Neuborne said demanding interest was "standard" and commented, "Does Leo Richter not understand the concept of interest?"
