.
The rich are different from you and me, and the NYTimes is always happy to let us plebes in on those differences:
Steven A. Cohen may have fended off the government for the most part, but his former wife is another story. Patricia Cohen continues to pursue Mr. Cohen, claiming that the billionaire investor cheated her out of money during their divorce some two decades ago and potentially owes her millions of dollars.
Helping to fuel the long-running legal battle is Asta Funding, a financial backer of a Beverly Hills, Calif., firm that has provided litigation financing to Ms. Cohen, according to court documents and people briefed on the matter. Asta and the firm that is financing Ms. Cohen’s lawsuit — Balance Point Divorce Funding — have an agreement to share in the proceeds of legal recoveries by clients…
Balance Point, founded in 2009 by Stacey Napp after her own acrimonious divorce, signed a deal with Ms. Cohen in the summer of 2013 to provide Ms. Cohen with about $1.2 million to continue her litigation, said people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak about a private transaction….
Balance Point is part of a niche business that provides financing in drawn-out matrimonial cases to litigants with wealthy spouses. Only a handful of companies provide such financing in the United States…
So, while you’re counting your meagre blessings, don’t forget to include the fact that you’ve probably never heard the phrase “litigation financing” before, not even from your RWNJ second cousin by marriage…
chrome agnomen
all these people should be vaporized.
Tree With Water
Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future….
Mike J
Is it bad that litigation financing companies exist, or that people need to come up with millions of dollars to have their case heard in the justice system?
Redshift
Sorry, Mr. Cartoonist, Obama beat you to the punch on that joke, and did it better.
Mike E
Here’s an interesting and refreshing twist on current events.
NotMax
Almost cries out as a candidate for a Kickstarter.
Mike in NC
Driving through Georgia and north central Florida, we spotted a few billboards about the South. One featured a waving rebel Stars & Bars flag, with the words NEVER FORGET at the bottom. Not sure what the hell that was all about; forgive your treasonous scumbag ancestors?
The other one was directed at religious nuts and said, “Christians — Use Your Right or Lose It — Vote!”
Mike J
The 49ers have more yards from Seahawks penalties than they have from passing.
NotMax
@efgoldman
So where did you punch him?
;)
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
@Mike J:
I’m almost completely convinced that Colin Kaepernick is not the answer for San Francisco. He’s regressed so badly of late.
wasabi gasp
@Mike in NC: Oh so close to being hysterically funny.
ETA: use it or lose it.
Mike J
@RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac): The Seahawks are treating them the way they did the Cardinals. Don’t blame your team. The Seahawks are just better.
Pogonip
I have liberally applied Vaporub, and with kleenexes and wastebasket handy, I am off to bed.
Mike E
@Tree With Water: Noah Cross: ‘Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.
Pogonip
@Mike E: Give that man the General Smedley Butler Award for courage and common sense.
Mike E
@Pogonip: Even the comments section–nearly always a cesspool–noted his integrity.
Elmo
@Pogonip: you’ve got it too? I woke up yesterday with my annual winter crud, and I’ve been slamming Emergen-C like the world is running out.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
@Mike J:
Kaep has been a mess for the last three games. Against the Giants and Eli’s 5 picks, he couldn’t get more than 16 points. It took a late run by an RB to beat the Redskins coming down to the wire. Now the Seahawks and 2 picks.
The Niners defense has kept the team in it, but Kaep is the bottleneck holding back the offense. A more traditional QB is needed.
Adam
@Mike in NC:
I’d assume the first would would be obvious?
Suzanne
I am sending my mom to pick up Spawn from her dad’s house. I will not give him the satisfaction of getting up in my face. I just laugh at him now anyway. I think it’s funnier.
danielx
Sounds like a pretty good investment to me, Cohen being one of those mega-assholes who generally makes troubles go away by waving money at the problem…one way or another.
Karen in GA
Working tomorrow, but from home. Hoping it’s as dead as it was this time last year. I’ll set my phone to play some obnoxious noise that would wake the dead when/if someone from work emails me, then go back to sleep.
Also kind of hoping I hear from the same idiot middle manager who took it upon himself to get sarcastic about my job performance the other day because he didn’t like the way I did something. Never mind that the other hundred people affected were fine with it. Um… idiot middle manager? The guy I support — you may have heard of him, he’s your boss’s boss — wants things done this way. Shall I run your complaint by him and see what he says? What? Yeah, I fucking thought not.
Somehow I doubt I’ll hear from him again.
That’s what sucks about being support staff — every insecure asshole in the company thinks you’re an easy target. But it’s fun to shut them up.
wasabi gasp
Wouldn’t an attorney, assuming the case is profitable, just take the case on a contingent fee? I have no experience being rich or divorced.
NotMax
Did not deign to visit so much as a single news site today, and feel none the lesser for it.
dmbeaster
Litigation finance has many forms and a lot of history. Big personsl injury firms pledge their book of business for financing practically in the same manner as traditional factoring. Others become your junior partner basically at great ecpense but non’recourse. This niche financing deal re divorce is really just another form of partnership dispute involving fraud.
Xenos
I don’t know if any states let attorneys take contingent fees for divorces. The idea is to stop lawyers from trying to talk people into divorces. They can encourage enough counter-productive but enriching behaviour once a divorce is commenced.
wasabi gasp
@wasabi gasp: I got halfway through the article and then completely stopped giving a damn about those people and the answer to my own question.
Heliopause
@efgoldman:
y.
They’re gimmick quarterbacks (Cam Newton as well). NFL defenses eventually figure that out. Wilson is a drop-back passer who happens to also be a good runner.
Also, keep in mind the gargantuan difference in receiving talent between the 49ers and Seahawks. Kaepernick is throwing to high draft picks, all-pros, and future hall-of-famers. Wilson is throwing to Doug Baldwin, Jermaine Kearse, and Luke Wilson.
wasabi gasp
@Xenos: I assumed it might be something like that, except for they have already been long ago divorced.
Suzanne
I wish I could afford a family law attorney. Mr. Suzanne owes me more child support than he is paying, but filing is such a fucking PITA.
wasabi gasp
@Suzanne: I don’t have one point two mil, but I have a big jug full of pennies you can use to bust your ex’s chops.
Suzanne
@wasabi gasp: Dawwww, thanks.
I feel kind of bad, because he just split up with his wife and is living with his mom, but then I remember how much he has financially screwed me, not to mention all the really awful stuff. Including but not limited to the DUI he got and didn’t tell me about. Then came and picked up Spawn.
wasabi gasp
@Suzanne: You sound conflicted as to whether you would beat him with my jug or let him bring it to a coinstar.
Suzanne
@wasabi gasp: I’m not really conflicted. I’d beat him with it, and feel mildly bad about it at the same time, but not badly enough to not do it. :)
patrick II
I am watching the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Bob Newhart is the guest. I haven’t laughed this hard in a while. Newhart is so droll in contrast to the manic Ferguson.
wasabi gasp
@Suzanne: I think I understand the ambivalence of the situation. I feel a little bad for my jug.
JWR
Forgive me if this has already been discussed, but I just saw a brief report on my local news, and it strikes me as a quite ominous development.
Oath Keepers patrolling Ferguson say they’re prepared to use lethal force
Vigilantism run wild.
NotMax
Just sitting down to Thanksgiving meal.
Delicioso to da max.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@JWR: When do they start calling themselves der Stahlhelm?
Origuy
From The Guardian
#ThingsThatAreNotMosques
JWR
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Well, in the clip I saw, they didn’t have their German helmets, but they were parading themselves across the roofs of several business, AK-47s in hand. But what I wonder is, who do they answer to? I mean, aside from the second clause, and only that clause, of the 2nd Amendment, (and God), and who gave them such permission?
Mike J
@Origuy: When Farage refers to UKIP as “the people’s army” all I can think of is Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts in Jeeves & Wooster.
MattF
Stevie Cohen is probably considering investing in these funds. If they win, he’d get some of his money back, after all.
MattF
@Redshift: Also, Dahlia LIthwick:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2014/11/white_house_thanksgiving_will_the_president_s_turkey_pardon_start_a_wave.html
MattF
It’s an outrage. And it’s an outrageous outrage. And it’s an outrage that it’s an outrageous outrage. Etc.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@JWR: The Oath Keepers are the 21st century equivalent of the paramilitary organizations that prowled Weimar Germany after the War to End Wars, and remind me of groups like der Stahlhelm. They don’t need permission, because the Homeland (Vaterland) transcends the law, God and their service in the armed forces annointed them as the Guardians of the State, and Amerika, fuck yeah (Deutschland uber alles).
Or if you don’t like the pre-war 2 Weimar Germany analogy, pick any convenient bunch of ex-military thugs, like the OAS, or the Knights of the White Camelia, blah blah fucking blah.
debbie
@efgoldman:
I did a fair amount of verbal punching yesterday. My cooking assignments took much longer than I expected and I walked in at 4:30 to a bunch of loud drunks well beyond redemption.
One clown introduced himself, asking who I was, and then no more than 2 minutes later, came back and did it all over again. I first thought I’d just let it be, but he had that annoying, insincere voice you hear at trade shows, so I stopped him in mid-sentence ant told him he’d already done that.
Not very Thanksgiving-y of me, but it was annoying.
Anya
I heard about litigation financing because my aunt is using it because her asshole of a husband is spending millions of dollars for her not to get a penny. They build a company together, and she supported him but she wasn’t planning for divorce, so he stiffed her. The problem is our justice system and not people finding a way to be on an equal footing with assholes with lots of money.