Lester Brickman

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. On May 31, 2016, Professor Brickman received the Monrad Paulsen Award of the Cardozo School, upon his retirement from teaching. 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, proposed the Early Offer model of allocating contingent fees. 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. 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.

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 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. 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.