Wealthy “Dream Team” lawyers who took over Abner Louima’s case are “wicked, evil men . . . ruled by demons of greed,” according to the widow of Louima’s first lawyer, who says her battle over legal fees has pushed her family to the brink of financial ruin.
“I can’t believe there are people as wicked and cruel as these men. Mr. Johnnie Cochran should be ashamed,” Elizabeth Thomas, a mother of four, railed yesterday, blaming the O.J. Simpson Dream Team leader for her husband’s fatal heart attack last year.
Several months before Carl Thomas died, Cochran and his partners, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, took steps to block Louima’s original lawyers from collecting fees on the Haitian immigrant’s $8.75 million settlement they’d won in his police torture case.
Now the widow – who came to Brooklyn federal court with two of her kids, Jonathan, 5, and Lisa, 16, in tow – says she may lose her Flatbush home and can no longer afford to pay her daughter’s high-school tuition. “These men do not need the money. I do,” fumed Thomas.
Michael Ross, representing the Dream Team, said his clients had “bent over backward” to provide her with money.
Cochran has yet to show up at the hearing in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Lawyers refused to discuss a round of settlement talks that stalled Monday. Earlier this year, Thomas and her late husband’s two colleagues, Brian Figeroux and Casilda Roper-Simpson, were offered $200,000.