Lester Brickman is an emeritus professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of the Yeshiva University and a legal scholar. He is one of the founding faculty members of the Cardozo, recruited by Yeshiva University in 1976 from the University of Toledo College of Law.Cardozo School of Law (1984). "Lester Brickman." Res Nova [Yearbook]: 79. On May 31, 2016, Professor Brickman received the Monrad Paulsen Award of the Cardozo School, upon his retirement from teaching.Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. "Class of 2016 Celebrates Commencement, May 31, 2016." He taught contracts, legal ethics and Land Use and Zoning at the Cardozo School of Law. He is the author of a book, Lawyer Barons: What Their Contingency Fees Really Cost America (Cambridge University Press, 2011), a detailed critique of perceived abuses and excessive costs of the American tort system, with proposals for reform. Brickman is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Florida and an LLM degree from Yale Law School.
Professor Brickman has written on asbestos litigation and tort reform. Brickman, with co-authors Jeffrey O'Connell and Michael Horowitz,Brickman, L. and H. D. Shapiro (2004). ""Early Offers:"A Proposal To Counter Attorney Fee Gouging By Aligning The Contingent Fee System With Its Policy Roots And Ethical Mandates," PointofLaw.com proposed the Early Offer model of allocating contingent fees.Brickman, Lester, Michael J. Horowitz, and Jeffrey O'Connell. Rethinking Contingency Fees: A Proposal to Align the Contingency Fee System with Its Policy Roots and Ethical Mandates. Studies for the New American Century. Washington, D.C.: Manhattan Institute, 1994. University of Virginia Law professor O'Connell and co-authors wrote in 2007 of this proposal for medical malpractice cases that it "attempts to reduce transactions costs, expedite payments, and address the ... victim's economic losses.Hersch, Joni, Jeffrey O'Connell, and W. Kip Viscusi. "An Empirical Assessment of Early Offer Reform for Medical Malpractice." Journal of Legal Studies 36 (June 2007): 232. Supported by tort reform advocate Walter Olson, Widener Commonwealth Law School professor Christopher J. Robinette, and New Hampshire physician Dr. Kevin Pho, the early offer proposal was adopted as law in New Hampshire in June 2012, over the strenuous objections of the state's governor and plaintiff bar.Guida, J. Brandon. "What New Hampshire's 'Early Offer' Law Really Does." New Hampshire Union Leader, July 11, 2012 ; Kennerly, Max. "New Hampshire's Insidious Early Offer Medical Malpractice Law," Litigation & Trial Lawyer Blog, 2012 ; Haines, Holly B., and William D. Woodbury. "The Early Offer Alternative in Medical Malpractice Litigation: A Statutory Trap to Limit Liability." New Hampshire Bar Journal (Fall 2012): 6-19 ; and Robinette, Christopher J. "Early Offers." In TortsProf, June 28, 2012 .
Another area in which his reform efforts have been successful is that of nonrefundable retainers. After Brickman and his former student Lawrence Cunningham wrote several law review articles and an amicus curiae brief arguing that they are ethically and legally impermissible, the New York Court of Appeals struck down their use by lawyers in New York State. This holding has been adopted in other states.Brickman, L. and Lawrence Cunningham (1988). "Nonrefundable retainers: impermissible under fiduciary, statutory and contract law." Fordham Law Review 57(2): 149-190.Brickman, L. and Lawrence A. Cunningham (1993). "Nonrefundable Retainers Revisited." North Carolina Law Review. 72(1): 1.Brickman, L. and L. A. Cunningham (1994). "Living with the Ban on Nonrefundable Retainers: Cooperman's Scope, Meaning and Consequences." New York State Bar Journal. 66(6): 50.Brickman, L. and L. A. Cunningham (1995). "Nonrefundable Retainers: A Response to Critics of The Absolute Ban." University of Cincinnati Law Review. 64(1): 11.Brickman, L. and L. A. Cunningham (1997). "Game theory and nonrefundable retainers: a response to professors Croson and Mnookin." Harvard Negotiation Law Review 2: 69-86.
Brickman played a significant role as an expert witness in a controversial 2013 case in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina, In Re Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC., et al., debtor. Counsel for Garlock, Garland Cassada of the Charlotte NC law firm Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, was successful in persuading Judge George Hodges to permit full discovery of 15 high-value asbestos claims settled by Garlock when it was a solvent entity. Using data obtained from these cases by Cassada, Professor Brickman's expert report set forth evidence of fraud, misrepresentation and "double-dipping" (contradictory accounts of exposure between tort and bankruptcy-trust claims) in all 15 cases, the net effect of which was to inflate the value of future claims that may be made against the bankrupt entity.Gvillo, Heather Isringhausen. "A Look at Two Rulings $1B Apart in Bankruptcy Proceedings of Garlock, Bondex." Legal Newsline (August 12, 2014).Fisher, Daniel. "A Stubborn Manufacturer Exposes the Asbestos Blame Game." Forbes (March 25, 2015).Tomsic, Michael. "In Charlotte, Judge Describes Asbestos Litigation 'Infected with the Impropriety of Some Law Firms'." WFAE 90.7 (January 23, 2014). The claimants, represented by the Garlock Asbestos Claims Committee, had estimated that future liability as high as $1.3 billion. Judge Hodges, in his January 10, 2014 "Order Estimating Aggregate Liability," reduced the amount required for the bankruptcy trust by more than $1 billion, to $125 million, asserting that:
The purpose of this Order is to determine Garlock's responsibility for causing mesothelioma and the aggregate amount of money that is required to satisfy its liability to present claimants and future victims. The estimates of Garlock's aggregate liability that are based on its historic settlement values are not reliable because those values are infected with the impropriety of some law firms and inflated by the cost of defense. The best evidence of Garlock's aggregate responsibility is the projection of its legal liability that takes into consideration causation, limited exposure and the contribution of exposures to other products. The court has determined that $125 million is sufficient to satisfy Garlock's liability for the legitimate present and future mesothelioma claims against it.Hodges, George. "In Re Garlock Sealing Technologies, LLC., et al.: Order Estimating Aggregate Liability." In Case No. 10-31607, United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina. Charlotte NC, 2014.
See also Asbestos and the law
Early life and education Childhood Lester Brickman was born September 4, 1940, in New York City, to Frank B. Brickman (1900-1981)Florida. Department of Health. Office of Vital Records. "Frank B. Brickman." Florida Death Index 1877-1998 (1998). and Lillian Bernstein Brickman (1902-1989),Ancestry.com. "New York, New York, Marriage Indexes 1866-1937." Provo UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2014. the second of three siblings. The family were, at the time, living on Walton Avenue in the Bronx.U. S. Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. T627, Washington DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. "Bronx, New York," v.3: 1407. Frank Brickman was a grocer and bookkeeper in New York City and, later, a kosher inspector in Florida, after the family moved to the Miami Beach area in 1953."Kosher Chicken." Hammond (Louisiana) Daily Star, April 29, 1977: 17.
According to the U.S. Census of 1930, Frank B. Brickman was born in Poland, but the 1940 enumeration lists his country of birth as Russia. This was not an unusual ambiguity for emigrant Jews who had been born in the Russo-Polish Pale of Settlement.U. S. Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. In a 1977 interview with a United Press International reporter, Brickman said he had been born in "Lornza, Poland [probably Łomża] and raised in Germany, where his family operated a grocery. He came to the U.S. in 1920 and became a wholesale grocer in New York." He told the reporter he was fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian and German as well as English.United Press, International. "Miami Beach's 'Kosher Cop' Butchers' Terror." Palm Beach Post, May 1, 1977, 39.
Frank Brickman arrived in the United States in 1920 or 1921 and married Lillian Bernstein in 1928.Ancestry.com. "New York, New York, Marriage Indexes 1866-1937." Provo UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2014. Their first child, Jeremiah Brickman (1930-1950), earned a baccalaureate at New York University in 1949, then attended Harvard Law School, where he died in October 1950 after receiving what the Harvard Crimson called "a mysterious head injury" in the university's Hillel House.Harvard Law School. Yearbook, 1950: 109; and 1951: 100; "Law Students [sic] Dies as Result of Mysterious Head Injury." Harvard Crimson (October 30, 1950).. Conflicting police and autopsy reports, and a suggestion of murder by journalist Walter Winchell, kept the case in the news for several weeks, but no arrests were made, and the death was ruled accidental."Brickman Death Remains Subject of Police Study." Harvard Crimson (October 31, 1950); "Police Affirm Hillel Death Is Still Unsolved; Will Trace Brickman's Path on Fatal Day." Harvard Crimson (November 2, 1950); "Police End Probe of Brickman Case with Old Verdict." Harvard Crimson (November 25, 1950); "Police to Reopen Brickman Probe." Harvard Crimson (November 18, 1950); "Probe Reopened in Death of Harvard Student." Boston Globe, November 17, 1950, 1 and 20; "Renew Probe of Student's Death." Lowell Sun, November 17, 1950, 1; "Student's Death Studied; Investigation Reopened in Case of Harvard Man." New York Times, November 18, 1950, 32; "'Irresponsibility:' The Mail." Harvard Crimson (December 18, 1950).
A younger sibling, Gloria Brickman, was born in March 1945; she married Michael Kenneth Supran in 1967 and resides in Florida."March Rites for Gloria Brickman." Jewish Floridian, December 2, 1966: 5B.
Secondary and post-secondary education Frank and Lillian Brickman's second child, Lester, was reportedly what is known in Yiddish as a yeshiva bocher, receiving his education in Hebrew schools until he reached high school age. Lester Brickman was a high-achieving student, one of Miami Beach Senior High School's student chemistry laboratory assistants, member of the French Club (1956), National Speech and Debate Association, National Forensic League, and National Honor Society (1957), and president of the school's Junior Optimist Club in 1957, his senior year.Miami Beach High School (Florida).Typhoon [yearbook]. Dallas TX: Taylor Publishing, 1956, "French Club;" and 1957: 32, 156, 177, and 179.