A Manhattan man’s attempt to get a chunk of his billionaire grandmother’s real-estate fortune got a hostile reception yesterday from a state appeals court.
Two of five judges at a hearing in the state Appellate Division in Manhattan attacked Michael Corbett’s claims that his uncle, Neil Bender, used “undue influence” on Bender’s mother, Mollie, to seize control of her vast real-estate empire.
“This is silly at best, some of the arguments you’re coming up with,” Justice John Sweeny told Corbett lawyers Michael Rakower and Carl Mayer.
Justice James Catterson said Sweeny was being “kind,” and accused Corbett of “scurrilous, unfounded character assassination.”
Mollie Bender, who died in 2007 at age 85, had inherited about 150 buildings in the Village and Chelsea from her brother, real-estate magnate William Gottlieb.