At The Bar; For Personal Injury Maven, a Christmas Card Tradition Fuels a Suit With Bitter Feeling
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“City sidewalks, busy sidewalks,” the classic goes. “It’s Christmas time in the city.” For thousands who have tripped and fallen on those sidewalks or might know someone who has, Christmas time in New York City has always included a holiday card from Harry Lipsig. For 60 years Mr. Lipsig, personal injury lawyer nonpareil, has sent Christmas cards to virtually everyone he ever buttonholed. He records their names on color-coded index cards — pink for lawyers, orange for firefighters, and so on — and stores them in a vast card catalogue. With Mr. Lipsig, it is always Christmas in July. That is when his secretaries have begun addressing the 60,000 or so cards. For personal injury lawyers, for whom personal contacts are crucial, holiday cards are not sent for the reasons Bing Crosby crooned of in “White Christmas.” In fact, Mr. Lipsig’s season’s greeting have become the crux of a most unmerry lawsuit. As bells jingle and children laugh these days, the discordant sounds of Lipsig v. Sullivan & Liapakis emanate from State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Mr. Lipsig, who will turn 89 on Dec. 26, built his career on outrageousness. He is someone who not only chased ambulances but did so flamboyantly. For thousands of accident victims, the first words out of their mouths after “Ouch!” have been “Harry Lipsig.” Even by Mr. Lipsig’s boisterous standards, however, the twilight of his career is noisy indeed. In the last two years he has legally adopted his former office manager, a woman in her 30’s; left his law firm in a huff; formed a new firm with a woman who has since sued him; formed yet another firm, where he currently practices; and most recently, took his original partners from two firms ago, Robert Sullivan and Pamela Liapakis, to court. That’s where the Christmas cards come in. Mr. Lipsig maintains he has been unable to send out his full complement of cards this year because Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Liapakis won’t disgorge the card file. Worse than that, he says, they have traded on his good name and deprived him of millions of dollars in referral fees, all in violation of the pact they signed upon separating. Sullivan & Liapakis counter that not only does he have the file but also that he stole it from them. In a letter included in court papers, a former secretary to Mr. Lipsig wrote that she knew he had the file because “I could not count how many envelopes I typed last year from cards, some of which seemed to be eons old.” Mailing the cards, the former partners say, violates both the pledge and a court order not to solicit clients from the firm where he worked for decades. Taking the matter to court, they add, is simply Mr. Lipsig’s — or his adopted daughter’s — way of keeping his name in print, propping up his practice and persuading the public that he can still practice law. Mr. Lipsig has in fact been homebound for weeks, recuperating from pneumonia and adjusting to a new pacemaker, and has been declining interviews for the first time since Hoover was President and Babe Ruth roamed the Bronx. But in a brief conversation this week, he said: “I’m in constant contact with my office and enjoying every blasted minute of it. My law firm is doing fabulously, doing fabulously in the millions.” More : query.nytimes.com |