Only a few years ago, Edward Fagan was a world-renowned lawyer for the underdog, brash and audacious enough to take on Swiss banks and even whole countries to win judgments for Holocaust survivors and victims of South African apartheid.

This week, the Supreme Court announced he was barred from practicing law in New Jersey, completing one of the steepest falls from grace in the state’s law community.

The court found Fagan, 56, misappropriated nearly $400,000 of the money he won for the victims he so effectively championed.

The justices agreed with the Disciplinary Review Board that Fagan knowingly misused client and escrow trust funds and was also punished for his “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.” Fagan was disbarred in New York in December.

“Somebody’s life work that goes bad in such a negative way … that’s the sad part,” said Jeannette Bernstein, the niece of Estelle Sapir, a Holocaust victim and former client of Fagan’s who had “entrusted” him with “everything.”

“I think the survivors were badly serviced by him,” Bernstein said. “He worked very hard but along the way, he lost us somewhere.

He walked away with millions, and for him to end up doing what he did, is unconscionable.”

Fagan said in an e-mail he had no comment on the court’s order.

When he appeared before the court last week, Fagan said he “didn’t misappropriate a penny of client funds.”

Fagan did not deny he had taken money from Gizella Weisshaus, a Holocaust survivor he represented, after putting it in his own personal trust fund. He said he was “entitled” to the money — more than $80,000 — she owed him for work he had done.

But Fagan could not produce all of the records showing he had done that work.

“I was a terrible bookkeeper,” he told the court, saying the New Jersey Office of Attorney Ethics had stolen his documents.

He gained international attention by being the first to file suit against Swiss banks for Holocaust survivors. In the class-action case, he and other lawyers eventually got a $1.25 billion settlement for thousands of clients in 1998.

(Source: NJ Star-Ledger)