Prominent N.Y. Lawyers Jab at Each Other in Astor Trial Main Event
There appears to be little love lost between two prominent New York attorneys who are pitted against each other as witnesses in an ongoing Manhattan courtroom battle over $60 million or so of a high-society estate.
The verbal jousting between the two lofty estate practitioners, G. Warren Whitaker, 58, and Henry Christensen III, 64, is one of the main events at an ongoing criminal trial, as the two witnesses figuratively yank at each other’s ties in lawyerly fashion, reports the City Room blog of the New York Times.
Christensen, for instance, admitted during his seven days of testimony in the New York Supreme Court case that he had once described Whitaker as a “second-rate lawyer,” the Times notes.
Asked what he had said about Whitaker, “Mr. Christensen blushed and pulled back as if he was about to deliver an appalling four letter word,” recounts an earlier New York Times article about the Astor trial, as a previous ABAJournal.com post notes. “He said he did not recall, but eventually chipped in, ‘It has been said that I called Mr. Whitaker a second-rate lawyer.’ ”
Today, Whitaker let it be known in his own gentlemanly testimony that he wasn’t favorably impressed with Christensen’s legal work either:
“It was very puzzling to me that the person who drafted the codicil would say it’s a first and final codicil,” Whitaker said at one point, referring to a 2003 amendment to Astor’s will drafted by Christensen after he replaced Whitaker as Astor’s counsel, the City Room blog reports. At the time the 2003 codicil was drafted, Whitaker noted, Christensen would have had no way of knowing whether it would later be amended.
Christensen, a former chair of Sullivan & Cromwell’s estate practice group, is now a partner at McDermott Will & Emery. Whitaker is a partner at Day Pitney.
The defendants in the case at trial are Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, and another estate lawyer, Francis Morrissey Jr. The two are accused of taking advantage of her diminished mental capacity to make inappropriate changes to the heiress’ will.
Astor died in 2007 at age 105, leaving an estate that was estimated at that time to be worth about $192 million.
Related earlier coverage:
New York Times: “Lawyer Describes Request to Redo Mrs. Astor’s Will”
ABAJournal.com: “‘Indignant’ Ex-S&C Lawyer Shouts Testimony in Trial of Brooke Astor’s Son”
ABAJournal.com: “McDermott Partner Testifies on Brooke Astor’s Embarrassment”
