Word: myerson
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Scandal is the coin of contemporary celebrity; it keeps the public interested. It makes Miss America a current affair. Funny how people have really cared about the pageant's politics: in 1945 the naming of the first Jewish Miss America, Bess Myerson; in 1979 the dumping of Bert Parks, the show's emcee for 25 years; in 1984 the dethroning of Vanessa Williams, the first winner of color, after sexually provocative photos surfaced. Race, creed, age, all have clouded the show. But like the winner at the moment of coronation--brandishing a mile-wide smile as she sobs...
...late 1987, not long after Myerson emerged as the firm's key partner, Finley collapsed into bankruptcy amid power clashes, soaring salaries and strangling debt. In his vengeful 1990 book, Conduct Unbecoming, former partner Steven Kumble tags Myerson as the main culprit in the breakup, partly because he squandered money. "Harvey is a compulsive spender, and to some degree he can't control it," explains Kumble. Myerson was equally obsessed with his looks. "Harvey had a series of toupees, of different lengths, that looked like old Knute Rockne football helmets," Kumble recalls. "He'd keep changing them and then...
...Myerson decided he could build another Finley-size business overnight. His pal William Simon introduced him to former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who accepted a $500,000 annual draw largely for lending his conservative name to the shingle. Myerson & Kuhn soon boasted 170 lawyers, but the firm had to borrow just to pay its high-profile partners, and Myerson's spending habits worsened the crunch. By 1989 the partnership was in Chapter...
With Wall Street awash in big fees during the past decade, it was no surprise that so many otherwise savvy lawyers kept signing up with Myerson, even after the Finley debacle. The law firms he was associated with are symbolic of what New York University law ethics professor Stephen Gillers calls "the new disloyalty," which swept the profession in the '80s. "Harvey has to be pathological to have told so many lies so constantly," says former law partner Leon Marcus. "He was always trying to prove he was bigger and better than everyone else. But I wish they didn...
...Myerson denies all charges, but his prospects of remaining a free man look slim. Several of the lawyers who aided Myerson in his scams have agreed to testify against him in exchange for immunity. Even if his upcoming defense is successful, Myerson faces two additional indictments: one for billing clients ; for the imaginary legal services of his brother-in-law (who is not an attorney); and the other for defrauding banks in order to buy a $1.75 million mansion in Key West, Fla., that may soon be seized by the feds. With his legal career a shambles, Myerson can still...