Milton Pollack, a noted federal judge who presided over some of the biggest financial-scandal cases of the 20th Century, died on Aug. 13. He was 97.
Judge Pollack grew up in Brooklyn and earned his law degree from Columbia University in 1929. He was named to the federal bench in the Southern District of New York in 1967 by President Lyndon Johnson, and never retired.
Throughout his judicial career, he was known as a strict and efficient arbiter who could not be fooled by a lawyer’s tricks because he either had seen them before or had used them himself in 23 years of private practice.
“He was a man who went straight to the essence of every case he ever handled,” said Judge Michael Mukasey, the chief judge for the Southern District. “He got right to it faster than just about anyone else I have ever seen.”
He was best known for taking complex financial scandals, boiling them down and compelling both sides to accept a settlement.
During the late 1980s and early ’90s, Judge Pollack sorted through the Drexel Burnham Lambert bankruptcy case, pulling together hundreds of claims against the company and its executives, including Michael Milken. In 1992, he approved a settlement in that case for more than $1 billion.
The amount was later reduced, but many experts had predicted when the case started that it would take decades to complete. Judge Pollack ended the case in a fraction of that time simply by telling lawyers on all sides to sit in a jury room until they came up with points of agreement.
Several hours later, they emerged with an outline of the settlement on a single sheet of yellow legal paper, which Judge Pollack then framed and put on his office wall.
In 1972, Judge Pollack presided in a case in which one of the lawyers was Roy Cohn, who had an intimidating reputation, and the judge frequently stood between the jury room and the elevator to ensure that Cohn could not cow jurors on lunch breaks.
