Warhol Leads to Proskauer Smoking Gun

A Swedish heiress has sued the law firm of Proskauer Rose for nearly $9 million, accusing the firm of manipulating its billing practices in order to overcharge her by millions. In a separate malpractice claim, she alleges that the firm mishandled her lawsuit against an art buyer who purchased an Andy Warhol silkscreen that had been stolen from her.

From The American Law Daily:

The heiress of a Swedish building fortune, Kerstin Lindholm of Greenwich, Conn., retained Proskauer in March 2002 to pursue claims against Peter Brant, the media mogul and Warhol enthusiast who purchased “Red Elvis” for $2.9 million in 2000 while it was on loan to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, court records show. Brant bought the painting–worth at least $12 million in 2003–from a crooked Swedish art dealer who sold it out from under Lindholm [.] The dealer eventually served prison time for the theft, but Lindholm never got the painting back.

This is where it gets interesting:

Now Lindholm and Proskauer are involved in an ugly dispute over fees that peaked earlier this month, when Lindholm sued the firm in state court in Connecticut. And her legal team at Bello, Lapine & Cassone in Stamford, Conn. has included something of a smoking gun as an exhibit in their complaint–an internal Proskauer memo written on letterhead bearing the name of a Proskauer associate who appears to have reviewed the firm’s Lindholm file at some point. (The note is undated.) In the handwritten note, the associate writes that descriptions of the firm’s work “may suggest double billing for same work,” that “rates are quite high,” and that there was an “overall excessive handling of every item in the case.”

More from The American Law Daily here.