Samantha Perelman may have lost her $600 million lawsuit against her uncle for her share of the family’s Hudson News fortune, but she won a whopping $10.6 million in legal fees.
Samantha, daughter of billionaire Ron Perelman and late New York Post gossip columnist Claudia Cohen, enlisted 38 people at nearly four law firms to work “around the clock” from April 2012 to December 2014.
Samantha had accused her late mother’s brother James Cohen of pressuring his ailing father, Robert Cohen, to disinherit her.
Samantha lost the case, but New Jersey Superior Court Judge Estela De La Cruz found that Samantha, 24, “had reasonable cause for suspicion of undue influence.” The judge sliced Samantha’s $22 million fee request in half, but also tossed out James’ demand that she get nothing for the “sheer outrageousness” of the request.
De La Cruz said that fee was fair because Samantha’s attorneys spared no expense for the “all-out war” of a trial and left “no stone unturned.” She added that the trial’s duration, six month, was nearly historic and has “few parallels” in the court’s existence.
The largest payout, more than $7 million, will go to Samantha’s trial attorney, Edward Friedman, and his law firm Friedman Kaplan.