Big Man on the Bench : At 85, Judge Behind Drexel Settlement Commands Respect and Fear

It was destined to be a long day for U.S. District Judge Milton Pollack. The jurist had gotten up early to oversee the final round of negotiations leading to Thursday’s announcement of the settlement of more than 150 civil lawsuits involving Drexel Burnham Lambert and imprisoned financier Michael Milken.

Working from his Park Avenue apartment--”I don’t trust the subway at four o’clock in the morning,” he said in an interview Thursday--the 85-year-old jurist who played a pivotal role in forcing attorneys to settle the cases was back on the phone, pushing weary lawyers to tie up remaining loose ends.

Once again, Pollack got his way, and by 8 a.m. Thursday, Drexel’s lawyers were briefing journalists on the terms of the controversial settlement, which leaves Milken with a personal fortune of at least $125 million and a family fortune several times that much.

But while some observers were dismayed by the fact that the $1.3-billion settlement leaves Milken a very rich man, the chorus of praise for Pollack was unanimous.

“There’s no way we can adequately describe the large and small prods the court used to keep the process going,” said Drexel attorney Ira M. Millstein, senior partner at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Absent Pollack’s intervention, “you would have seen litigation going into the next century,” Millstein added. “I’m not exaggerating. You would have seen litigation going to the year 2005.”

To be sure, nobody who practices law before Pollack would likely criticize him. Still, the jurist commands respect--and fear--among attorneys for his force of will, intellect and penchant for seizing and wielding power.

Pollack graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1929. He was a respected solo practitioner specializing in securities law before President Lyndon Johnson tapped him in 1960 for a lifetime term on the federal court in Manhattan.

One of his most famous cases as a trial judge came in 1981, when he threatened to fine a Swiss bank $50,000 a day if it did not reveal to the Securities and Exchange Commission the names of customers suspected of insider trading. The bank gave in.

“I’m not easy,” he said. “I’m known as the tough judge.”

And the jurist who won’t retire isn’t the least bit retiring in reminding the world where the power lies.

“People will know that I’m where the honey pot is,” Pollack told the Wall Street Journal last week after winning extraordinary power from a higher court to divvy up the $1.3-billion settlement among claimants who range from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to investors who got burned by buying Drexel-issued bonds.

“This is not a man you want to offend,” said one lawyer who has argued before Pollack.

Pollack’s achievement in the civil suits involving Drexel and Milken come on the heels of another Herculean effort, the proposed settlement of Drexel’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding.

“No doubt aware of the tortured bankruptcy proceedings of cases such as Allegheny International, LTV and Eastern Airlines, he fully injected himself into the process and established deadlines for resolving all controversies,” wrote attorneys Stanley Arkin and Kenneth Coleman in praising Pollack’s judicial activism. “No one seriously considered contesting his will.”

Pollack lives in the Park Avenue apartment with his second wife, Moselle, to whom he has been married for 20 years. His first wife died after 35 years of marriage.

Lawyers said Pollack makes such a good judge because, until he was appointed to the bench by President Johnson at age 60, he learned all the tricks of the trade as a practicing attorney.

“He knows when a lawyer is bellowing and when a lawyer is being serious,” Millstein said. “He knows how to cut to the quick.”

Bio: Judge Milton Pollack

Pollack engineered the “global settlement” of more than 150 lawsuits relating to Drexel Burnham Lambert and financier Michael Milken, litigation that many legal experts contend would otherwise have stretched into the next century.

Age: 85

Born: New York, N.Y.

Education: Received a bachelor of arts degree in 1927 from Columbia University, followed by a juris doctorate from Columbia in 1929.

Resume: Pollack practiced securities law before President Lyndon B. Johnson tapped him in 1960 for a lifetime term on the federal court in Manhattan. In addition to engineering the Milken-Drexel settlement, he also managed the proposed settlement of Drexel’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding in 1990.

Philosophy: “I’m not easy,” he says. “I’m known as the tough judge.”

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