| "A half-dozen sheriff's deputies raided a disbarred attorney's office last week in New York City in search of the 43 boxes of files he has refused to hand over to the law firm that has taken over his biggest case, a wrongful-death action filed by a Bronx woman on behalf of her husband, a ship-rigger who plummeted to his death at the Brooklyn Navy Yards." " "None of the records we've been seeking [were] there," said Michael S. Feldman, a partner at Jacoby & Meyers, who, with Terry D. Horner, now represents the plaintiff, Ruby Emanuel. "No trial notes, no photographs, no witness statements, no pleadings. The only thing that was there was the record ... generated as a result of my efforts to obtain the file."" " Three years earlier, Heller won a $25 million jury award in Emanuel's case, which Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Leland Degrasse reduced to $7.6 million in " " Then in May 2004, an Appellate Division, 1st Department, panel threw out the verdict and remanded the case to the Supreme Court." " Exactly 50 days later, another 1st Department panel disbarred Heller for a pattern of improprieties predating Emanuel's case. (Two judges, justices David Friedman and George D. Marlow, sat on both 1st Department panels.) " " "In light of the cumulative evidence of respondent's 24-year history of sanctions, his perverse and persistent refusal to accept adverse rulings, reflective of an utter contempt for the judicial system, and his consistent, reprehensible, unprofessional behavior, which has included screaming at, threatening and disparaging judges, adversaries and experts, intentionally defying court rulings, and disrupting and thwarting proper legal process through both physical and verbal aggression, we are of the opinion that the appropriate sanction here is disbarment."" " Having lost first her multimillion-dollar award and then her attorney in just over a month, Emanuel, a Bronx mother of two who had recently filed for bankruptcy, turned to Jacoby & Meyers to take over her late husband's wrongful-death claim." " In various court papers, Heller has demanded from $2 million to more than $12 million in fees, as well as $300,000 to $400,000 in unitemized disbursements, before turning over the documents. " " Court orders and a night in jail, as well as a $10,000 sanction and 30-day jail sentence ordered by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Howard R. Silver -- currently stayed by the 1st Department -- have failed to alter his stance." " Silver recently issued a warrant and last Tuesday morning, a team of deputies, accompanied by a locksmith, stormed Heller's lower Broadway office. (Although disbarred, Heller maintains an office listed as the Kenneth Heller Law Office with Verizon, WestLaw and Yahoo! Yellow Pages.)" " While Heller has offered various accounts of the location of the files -- lost, in a house upstate, damaged by a flood and discarded by workers -- they apparently were not in his office." "Feldman said the fight for the files will go on, citing Heller's appeal of his sentence for contempt, which is pending before the 1st Department." " "I'm an optimist and a realist," Feldman said. "I think that anybody who is threatened with 30 days in jail and a $10,000 fine will eventually come to their senses."" " Emanuel's husband suffered the injuries that would eventually take his life in the early morning hours of Dec. 17, 1992, while part of a crew dry-docking a tank-barge in the Brooklyn Navy Grading Dock. The ship, known as the ST-114, had taken on water, following a shallow-stranding on rocky ground two weeks earlier." " The husband, a ship-rigger for G. Marine Diesel Corp., was helping rig a gangplank that would connect the ST-114 to the dock. A crane lifted the gangplank in order to position one end on the ship, but the gangplank slipped off the deck, throwing him to the bottom of the dry dock, a fall of nearly five stories." " He spent the next 20 months in a hospital, paralyzed from the neck down, before succumbing to his injuries in August 1994." " His widow, who was 47 at the time of the accident, hired Heller, a veteran maritime-law expert, to pursue a claim. Heller filed an $800 million suit against the ship's owner, energy giant Amerada Hess, and the ship's operator, Spentonbush/Red Star Companies, among others." " A Manhattan jury found Amerada Hess and Spentonbush negligent, and awarded Emanuel $25 million. Under protest, Heller consented to a reduction to $7.6 million." " Three years later, finding "issues of fact concerning whether the barge owner breached its active control duty," the 1st Department reversed
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