Milton Pollack

Milton Pollack, a noted federal judge who presided over some of the biggest financial-scandal cases of the 20th century, died in August 2004 at New York Weill Cornell Center. He was 97. Judge Pollack grew up in Flatbush, 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 B. Johnson, and never retired. During the late 1980's and early 1990's, Judge Pollack sorted through the Drexel Burnham Lambert bankruptcy case, pulling together hundreds of claims against the company and its executives, including Michael R. Milken. In 1992, Judge Pollack 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. Judge Pollack sentenced Jane Alpert, a member of the Weather Underground, to 27 months in prison for conspiring to bomb a federal building in New York during the Vietnam War, and then jumping bail. Judge Pollack's first wife, Lillian Klein, to whom he was married 35 years, died in 1967, and his second wife, Moselle Baum Erlich, whom he married in 1971, died in February 2004. Judge Pollack is survived by four daughters, Stephanie Miller of Scarsdale, N.Y., Joan Kaplan and Judy Margolis, both of Houston, and Phyllis Asch of Manhattan; one son, Daniel Pollack of Manhattan; 15 grandchildren; and 23 great-grandchildren.