'Indignant' Ex-S&C Lawyer Shouts Testimony in Trial of Brooke Astor’s Son
The former chair of Sullivan & Cromwell’s trusts and estates practice lost his cool when questioned yesterday about his representation of both Brooke Astor and her son.
An “indignant” Henry Christensen III “blew his top” under questioning by prosecutor Elizabeth Loewy, the New York Daily News reports. The assistant DA is seeking to prove that Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, took advantage of his mother’s declining mental condition to benefit himself another lawyer, Francis X. Morrissey, after engineering Christensen’s ouster.
The New York Times says Christensen “hotly defended his loyalty” to Astor when Loewy pointed out that Christensen met with Marshall 35 times the year before Astor changed her will without the lawyer’s knowledge to give her son control of $60 million in estate assets. Christensen met with Astor only eight times the same year.
“I told you, I was meeting with Mr. Marshall on the instructions of his mother,” Christensen said. According to the Times, “his voice [was] rising and his cheeks reddening” as he spoke.
The Times said Christensen then shouted this statement: “I gave 15 years of devoted, undivided attention to Mrs. Astor and I was fired” by Marshall. “And I resent the suggestion that I was doing anything other than what she requested.”
Christensen is a prosecution witness, but at times prosecutors have questioned whether the lawyer had divided loyalties and whether Astor was competent to sign a codicil that Christensen had drafted. Christensen had defended the codicil in previous testimony, saying Astor was competent “to tinker around the edges” of her will but not to sign an entirely new will. He also had testified that although he represented both Astor and Marshall, he represented only Astor in regards to estate planning matters.
Prosecutors contend Christensen was fired at Marshall’s insistence when the lawyer balked at making more extensive changes to her will than contained in the codicil he drafted. Christensen is now a partner at McDermott, Will & Emery.
