Residents of a Kips Bay housing project who claimed they were being poisoned by toxic molds got very little green as part of an “extremely strange” court settlement, a Post investigation has found.
The residents’ lawyer, Steven Goldman, settled 160 suits against Phipps Plaza South for a total of $1.17 million, but more than 50 percent of that money – $600,000 – went to his fees and expenses.
That means his 480 clients, who claimed they were suffering from injuries ranging from asthma to cancer, got an average of just $1,000 a piece in the deal, which was approved by Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Louise Gruner Gans.
“The money he offered me wasn’t even enough to buy a decent tombstone for my daughter,” said 81-year-old Mattie Quailey, whose daughter, Lorraine Woods, 58, died in 1998 from alleged prolonged exposure to molds at the Phipps Houses on Second Avenue.
Goldman defended his fees, noting the enormous amount of work he did putting together the cases and the money he laid out for experts and court costs. Of the $600,000, $480,000 was for expenses, he said.
“This is a case where I took some licks, battled a big firm and spent a lot of money, but we got some credibility for toxic-mold litigation,” he said.
The deal was struck last November, and pays some tenants as much as $25,000 and others as little as $100.
Goldman said Quailey is the “lone dissenter.”
When Goldman called her into his office to give her her share, he offered her $2,000. She refused – so Goldman later upped the offer to $3,000 after getting approval from the judge.
Jill Fisch, a professor at Fordham Law, called the haggling “odd,” noting that Goldman should have gotten her the most he could have in the first place. But Fisch and another top legal expert said other aspects of the case are even more bizarre.
Goldman refused to tell Quailey the size of the total settlement, citing the judge’s gag order on the case.
That also means he didn’t have tell her or his 479 other clients how much his fees were.
“The judge’s order is clear, and it says it’s confidential,” Goldman told The Post. “Phipps requested it, and we’re trying to honor it.”
The gag order itself was sealed by Gans, and Phipps refused comment.
Veteran civil lawyer Charles Stillman said it’s unheard of for an attorney not to tell his client the details of a settlement.
“He has an independent responsibility to each of these people,” Stillman said, and that includes an obligation to provide “full disclosure.”
The gag order didn’t stop Goldman from telling Ardec Funding Corp. how much the deal was for when he went to take out a $56,000 loan against his share of the settlement in December, court papers show.
Goldman said he was able to tell Ardec the amount because it had already been reported in The Post – but it had been reported by the time he refused to answer Quailey, as well.
Ardec, meanwhile, has to get in line for its money. Goldman and his firm were $1.4 million in debt, and its entire share of the settlement is being used to pay it off, court papers show.
Fisch said personal-liability lawyers are often in the red, but she found it “extremely strange” that the judge approved a “global settlement” in this case because it was not a class-action suit, in which all the plaintiffs are joined together.