Which Firm Will Get Kerkorian’s Legal Business Is in Doubt : Several Partners Split From Wyman Bautzer
Financier Kirk Kerkorian and his firms pay out millions of dollars a year in legal fees, but the question of who will have that business in the future has been left up in the air by a split in the ranks of Wyman, Bautzer, Christensen, Kuchel & Silbert.
The movie-casino-airline entrepreneur’s longtime top legal adviser, Terry N. Christensen, 47, has formed a law firm that has been joined by 12 partners with ownership interests in Wyman Bautzer. But an estimated 125 lawyers are remaining, including some who head specialized departments.
For the past two decades, Kerkorian’s name has identified with the prominent Los Angeles law firm, where he was its biggest client until it grew in recent years to rank 10th in size in the city. However, Wyman Bautzer has “plenty” of business to remain highly profitable, its loyalists said Tuesday.
Among those departing are several who have worked for years on Kerkorian legal business. This has included affairs of publicly traded MGM/UA Communications, in which the financier is an 82.4% owner, as well as his casino and airline operations.
In the last fiscal year, MGM/UA alone reported paying $1.6 million in fees to Wyman Bautzer.
The surfacing of the Wyman Bautzer schism brought a belated disclosure that Christensen had resigned April 1 as president of Kerkorian’s private investment company, Tracinda Corp. He sought to return to his senior partnership at Wyman Bautzer, but his terms were rejected.
Criminal defense lawyer Howard L. Weitzman, a key partner who joined the firm 15 months ago and is staying, said Tuesday that Christensen wanted to be designated the firm’s managing partner and requested a corresponding share of its income. But the majority of the partners, including a number of those who have joined the firm in the last 18 months, balked at Christensen’s demands, according to both factions.
The bitter split began surfacing in legal journals in recent days when dissidents unsuccessfully sought an order from the Los Angeles County Superior Court restraining the firm from using its current name and freezing the use of its assets.
Weitzman accuses the dissidents of “vindictiveness” and attempting to dissolve the firm, which the other faction denies.
Christensen said the issue over his return was the “catalyst” for factional in-fighting that already existed. The dissidents decided to leave and join him in the new firm of Christensen, White, Miller, Fink & Jacobs.
Last July, Christensen resigned from Wyman Bautzer as a senior partner to take on a full-time job as Tracinda president. His name remained part of the firm’s official name--although it is to be removed shortly--and he retained the affiliation “of counsel” to the firm. He said he is staying on the MGM/UA board and executive committee but sidestepped a fuller discussion of his present relationship with Kerkorian.
No Commitments Yet
Fred Benninger, a veteran Kerkorian executive who heads MGM Grand Inc., his publicly traded casino and airline company, maintained in a telephone interview Tuesday that there will be no decision on which law firm will represent Kerkorian in the future “until the dust settles.”
“They all asked what we were going to do (with the Kerkorian legal business),” Benninger said. “We said we don’t know until everybody is in place and we see what they have. We didn’t want to make any commitments.”
Weitzman and Ronald L. Fein, who joined the firm last May along with four other lawyers from Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, speculated Tuesday that Kerkorian’s present legal cases would probably remain with the lawyers who have been working on them. They said this category included lawyers in both Wyman Bautzer and the new firm. They declined to speculate what Kerkorian would do about his future legal arrangements.
Stephen D. Silbert, president of MGM/UA, is one lawyer who has long worked for Kerkorian and is remaining of counsel to Wyman Bautzer. A former partner in the law firm, Silbert declined to comment on the split or to speculate on its effect on Kerkorian’s future legal work.
Former Wyman Bautzer partners represented in the new firm’s name are Andrew Millar White, Louis R. Miller III, Barry E. Fink and Gary N. Jacobs.
Voted Out of Committee
Christensen said others who joined him from Wyman Bautzer are Peter M. Weil, Patricia L. Glaser, James S. Schreier, Janet McCloud, Terry D. Avchen, J. Jay Rakow, Christine Burdick-Bell, Michael John O’Connor and Daniel G. Jordan. All but Jordan were equity partners, according to Weitzman.
One of the precipitating factors in the split, Weitzman said, was the partnership’s voting White and Miller out of the executive committee.
Weitzman conceded that, before the Christensen issue arose, there was “some disagreement” in the Wyman Bautzer ranks. He said it involved “whether or not the money should be spread around to other partners and associates . . . or go into certain partners’ pockets.” He said he and others remaining at the firm favored spending “for the benefit of the firm and for some of the younger members and partners.”
Asked the effects of the split on the firm, Weitzman said: “Our analysis is it will be more profitable and more viable because of the lessening of the overhead.”
