Biglaw Divorce Gets Nasty As Ex-Wife Cross-Examines Former Husband

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this was a good idea.

Hydee Feldstein, a retired Sullivan & Cromwell partner, decided to cross-examine her ex-husband Peter Gregora, a former tax litigator at Irell & Manella, in their contentious divorce case — a case where Feldstein alleges Gregora stole nearly $20 million from her. They say a lawyer representing herself has a fool for a client. Well, Feldstein has outside counsel — indeed counsel from two firms, Miller & Ayala LLP and the Rudd Law Firm — yet it was Feldstein who cross-examined her ex in open court. After reading the resulting train wreck, perhaps there are fools on all sides of Feldstein’s defense.

Per Law360:

Feldstein pressed Gregora on whether he’d started to move money from their joint bank accounts to his private accounts after she threatened to divorce him in 2008, and the two began bickering over whether he was moving the money to hide it from her, or whether the private account was community property after all, when Judge Mark A. Juhas stepped in.

“You need to ask him a question instead of squabbling with him,” Judge Juhas told Feldstein. Turning to Gregora, he added, “Same for you. Please don’t squabble with her.”

And that was just the tip of the iceberg of squabble. Feldstein — who we noted in 2013 was a curious victim, seeing as she possesses all the financial acumen one would expect from a Biglaw partner focused on “financings for acquisitions, recapitalizations, spin-offs, restructurings and bankruptcies, including advice to investment banks, financial institutions, funds and other lenders in the areas of strategic, corporate and commercial finance, creditors’ rights, workouts and bankruptcies” — hammered Gregora about the money she claims he transferred away from her over the years.

As Law360 notes, Feldstein referred to herself in the third person throughout the exchange “to retain, she said, some sense of professionalism.” The only professions where you referring to yourself in the third person is acceptable: sports, music, Bob Dole, and… that’s actually the end of the list. As “retired bankruptcy partner” didn’t make the cut, Feldstein probably should cut the act, because beyond that acceptable list, illeism doesn’t convey professionalism as much as “a hokey ploy” or “downright insanity.”

The unsupervised sniping continued as Gregora got in a solid dig at Feldstein:

“When was the first time your wife told you she was divorcing you and leaving you?” Feldstein asked Gregora, trying to pin down when he’d begun consolidating some of their joint accounts into accounts that were under his name only.

“Probably about 1986,” Gregora said, referring to their first year of marriage.

Aw, they’re a lovely couple.

“When was the first time she meant it, when your son was going away to college? Was it in 2008?” Feldstein asked, lunging closer to the witness stand.

“Lunging” is not a positive descriptor. Even allowing for a certain amount of journalistic license, getting to “lunging” is a sign you’ve royally breached every lesson in trial etiquette. There’s no trial practice manual that concludes, “make sure the media describe you as ‘lunging’ toward the witness.” That said, in the annals of trial practice this one is probably better than “allowing your obviously angry and aggrieved to client cross-examine the alleged thief herself.”

On the plus side, Feldstein seems to have rattled Gregora into some stupid answers:

Gregora fired back that daily living expenses are far higher than his ex-wife is imagining, saying that many expenses, including car maintenance and buying new clothes or food, pop up without planning.

“If you ever go through credit card charges and say, ‘What is this,’ you’ll discover you bought all kinds of things you didn’t even know you were buying,” Gregora said, his voice booming in the gallery. “Assuming that we did not live naked in the woods without clothing, without utilities, without a house, that we would be spending some amount of money … I know that I didn’t steal any money. So if that’s true, and it is, then the answer has to be that we spent that money.”

Feldstein and Gregora were married 15 years. A little over $1 million after taxes each year got eaten up by car maintenance and utilities? Note he’s not rattling off big-ticket purchases — which perhaps were made — he’s blaming car maintenance and utilities. Unless they own a Formula 1 team, they shouldn’t be shelling out this kind of dough on car maintenance.

This isn’t to say Gregora is lying that the couple really spent the supposedly missing $20 million, but let’s not pretend this is a matter of rotating the tires and picking up a six-pack. Cite second and third homes or luxury boats or something.

But, Feldstein’s spin as a litigator appears to have ended in a Pyrrhic victory, as Judge Juhas lent his support to this farce when he admonished Feldstein for expecting Gregora to remember all their 7-Eleven runs. Do the Slurpees come in gold mugs?

Because if we’re talking about 7-Elevens we really may as well speculate that it’s hidden in the couch cushions.

Ex-Sullivan, Irell Attys Trade Barbs In $20M Divorce Trial [Law360]

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