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Neuborne Withdraws Request For Interest From Holocaust Survivors
THE NEW YORK SUN BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun - February 19, 2008

An acrimonious and protracted dispute over legal fees that pitted a New York University law professor against a group of Holocaust survivors has ended.

Less than a month after Burt Neuborne asked for $300,000 in interest above the $3.1 million he had already received for administering a settlement between Swiss banks and Holocaust survivors, the professor decided to withdraw the request for the interest.

In a letter explaining the decision to a federal judge, Mr. Neuborne said the "petty squabbles over attorneys' fees" were diverting attention from the "profound legal and moral issues raised by the Holocaust."

Mr. Neuborne played a key role in a landmark lawsuit alleging that Swiss banks profited during the Holocaust from bank accounts belonging to victims of Adolf Hitler. In 2005, he submitted a bill for $4.1 million for his work in disbursing the $1.25 billion settlement by the banks to Holocaust survivors and heirs of victims. A group of American survivors objected to the legal bill, saying they thought Mr. Neuborne was working for free.

The dispute appeared to be settled last year when a federal judge in Brooklyn, Frederic Block, agreed that Mr. Neuborne would receive $3.1 million, an amount that was intended as a compromise. But Mr. Neuborne then drew another round of objections from survivors last month when he asked for $299,419 in interest as compensation for the two years he spent wrangling about his original bill.

"In deference to your call for 'peace in the house,'" Mr. Neuborne wrote to Judge Block, "I withdraw any request for the interest to which I believe I am legally entitled."