David Kagon dies at 90; lawyer won palimony case for Lee Marvin

David Kagon, the attorney who ultimately won the famous “palimony” case against his client, Oscar-winning actor Lee Marvin, after a decade-long legal battle, died Dec. 20 at his Malibu home after a short illness. He was 90.

Kagon represented Marvin at the 1979 trial in which the actor’s former live-in companion, Michelle Triola Marvin, sought half the $3.6 million the actor earned during their six-year relationship.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge rejected her claims, ruling that there was neither an express nor an implicit contract obligating the actor to share his wealth with Triola Marvin, a former singer and dancer who legally changed her last name even though she and Marvin were never married.

Under the legal principle of “equitable remedy,” however, the judge awarded her $104,000 so she could learn new job skills. Marvin Mitchelson, the celebrated divorce attorney who pioneered the right to palimony and represented Triola Marvin, proclaimed victory on her behalf.

Kagon called the award “a magnanimous gesture by a humane and compassionate judge” but insisted that Triola Marvin did not win the case. “It would be wholly unreasonable to consider her a successful party in the Marvin case,” he told the Associated Press in 1979, “when she decisively lost on each and every point of her complaint.”

He took the case to the state Court of Appeal, which agreed and rescinded the award in 1981.

Although Marvin, the gravelly voiced actor admired for his work in such movies as “Cat Ballou” and “The Dirty Dozen,” did not have to pay palimony to his ex-lover, the principal of palimony remained intact. That he was portrayed in the court of public opinion as the loser was aggravating to Kagon.

“He won the case on appeal. The best gift you could give David is to get that right,” said Jared Laskin, a former colleague of Kagon’s at the Century City firm Goldman & Kagon. “She won the theoretical point but not the practical one.”

After the Marvin case, Kagon switched his focus from entertainment to family law and handled several more palimony cases, although none as high-profile as Marvin vs. Marvin.

He made an important contribution to palimony law in another California case, Bergen vs. Wood, in 1993.

That case established that palimony cannot be awarded if the former couple did not live together full-time, Laskin said.

Kagon was born Aug. 10, 1918 in Woodridge, N.Y., and grew up in Lawrence, Kan. He attended Columbia University as an undergraduate before joining the U.S. Navy in 1941.

He served as an educational services officer during World War II and earned his law degree from Columbia in 1947.

A Malibu resident for four decades, he was active in its cityhood drive and also was a longtime board member of the Beverly Hills Bar Assn.

He retired from his law practice in the mid-1990s.

Kagon is survived by his wife, Dorothy; a daughter, Jane; a son, Robert; and two grandsons.

elaine.woo@latimes.com