Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

                                                            -Kris Kristofferson

Most people outside of New York have never heard of Burt Pugach.  Many who haven’t been around the New York legal world very long haven’t heard of him either.  But he’s a legend.  Now 81 years old, he’s as toxic as he was in 1959, when he became the personification of evil.

From the New York Law Journal :

Mr. Pugach was convicted in 1959 of hiring three men to throw lye in the face of his ex-girlfriend, Linda Riss. Ms. Riss suffered severe injuries, including burns across her scalp and nearly total blindness.

A prosperous Bronx attorney at the time of his conviction, Mr. Pugach returned to the law following his release from the Attica Correctional Facility in 1974, only this time as an assistant to others.

Amazingly, Pugach married Linda Riss after his release from Attica.  I can’t explain it either, but they have lived in marital bliss since, and were even the subject of a New York Times profile whe the movie about his life premiered.

Pugach was quite the operator when he made the decision to have acid thrown on Riss, and he hasn’t slowed down one iota since.

Burt has made the news again because of his toxic affect on Frank Hancock, a Queens lawyer who, inexplicably, decided to be a front for Pugach’s backroom law practice.  The end result was Hancock’s disbarment.

One of the worst kept secrets in Queens was that Burt was still playing lawyer, to whatever extent he could. But when someone needed to appear in court, it couldn’t be him.  So he needed a real lawyer to stand up for him.  That’s where Hancock fit in.

In a decision last week, the Appellate Division, Second Department, found that one of Mr. Pugach’s colleagues, criminal-defense attorney Frank J. Hancock, crossed an ethical line by enabling Mr. Pugach to practice law and by failing to inform courts of various frauds perpetrated by Mr. Pugach.

“[T]he record reveals that [Mr. Hancock] afforded so little regard to his law license as to allow a disbarred felon to use his name freely on court papers and to advertise himself as his paralegal,” the unanimous panel ruled in Matter of Hancock, 06-02769.

The panel disbarred Mr. Hancock, effective immediately.

What compelled Hancock to be party to Burt’s machinations?  Who knows?  The few bucks he made off the deal hardly seems compelling, though you never what someone will do for cash when they don’t think they’ll get caught.

Burt, on the other hand, got a walk on this deal.  What are they going to do to him?  Prosecute him?  Put an 81 year old in prison?  Deny a blind, disfigured wife her mate?  He has got to be chuckling to himself, because he has known what the bottom is like, and there isn’t much more that can be done to bother him.

Burton Pugach is a piece of work in the legal profession.  A real legend.  But if he calls you asking for a small favor, just hang up the phone.  While Burt has nothing left to lose, you do.