Morris Eisen once had a personal injury firm in New York with dozens of lawyers. Many trumpeted his legal smarts. Then he was busted. For rigging cases by fabricating evidence. He was convicted in 1991 of bribery, mail fraud and racketeering and disbarred in 1992, and will forever be a disgrace to the community.

And now it seems, the crook Eisen has been victimized by another crook, Bernard Madoff. Eisen is on the Madoff list with two separate accounts, one on exclusive Fisher Island in Florida and one in Manhattan:

Morris Eisen Fisher Island FL 33109
Morris Eisen & Caryl Ellis New York NY 10022

While he may have been disbarred, he still clearly had substantial assets. (And his cases continue to be argued in one fashion or another.)

A little summary of Eisen's problems from a June 2007 post of mine:

Some of the conduct included shrinking the size of a ruler down on a xerox machine, so a pothole would appear larger when the "ruler" was used, and paying a witness to give testimony about an accident when, in fact, he was in jail at the time and nowhere near the scene.

And when I did my prior summary, I didn't even bother with the sledgehammer that was used to make the accident seem worse.

How much of Eisen's success was based on being a good lawyer and how much based on him being a crook is known by only a few. But one thing is certain, he was an embarrassment to the profession and fed all the worst fears and jokes about lawyers being crooks and ambulance chasers. He tried to claim that the prosecutors picked on him because they were in league with the insurance companies and wanted "to send a chill through the ranks of the lawyers who represent accident victims." I am no less angry today about that crap than when I heard it nearly two decades ago.

For many of us, whose reputations were tarnished merely by being in the same profession as he, no punishment was too great. He served 57 months in prison.

As the old saying goes, what goes around in life comes around. Murray Eisen the hustler has now been hustled by Bernie Madoff. Don't expect me to shed a tear for either of them.

Update: Walter Olson has more on Eisen at Overlawyered, in Live by the swindle...
(hat tip to Louis Schepp for the find)

Labels: Attorney Ethics