Eddie Hayes (lawyer)

Eddie Hayes (born 1947) is an American lawyer, journalist, and memoirist. He is known for his role in settling the estate of Andy Warhol and representing several organized crime figures.

Hayes grew up in Queens, New York, and graduated from University of Virginia and then (supporting himself first as a bartender and later as a law clerk) Columbia Law School.

He worked as an Assistant District Attorney in the Bronx.

Tom Wolfe met him socially and they became close friends, he has acknowledged that he based the lawyer character Tommy Killian in the 1987 novel "The Bonfire of the Vanities" on Hayes. Hayes is known for his flamboyant dress, and has been inducted into Vanity Fair's international best dressed hall of fame.

In the matter of the Warhol estate, he was hired by the artist's foundation for a fee proportional to the value of the estate. His appraisers valued it at nearly $700 million, in contrast to the $100 million figure that Christie's auction house had given the foundation. The Court found the estate was worth $500 million. The Foundation is required to give away 5% of the value of its assets so this decision was important to the public as well as to Hayes. After several rounds of litigation between him and the foundation, an Appellate Court ruled he had been overpaid and owed them over a million dollars, and he come close to filing for bankruptcy. Hayes filed a complaint against the Appellate Judge who ruled against him, Justice Francis Murphy, on the grounds that Murphy had a relationship with the lawyer for the Foundation that he should have disclosed. Murphy resigned rather than answer the complaint.

Andy Warhol had met the lawyer briefly in the fall of 1980 and wrote in his diary " defense lawyer named Ed Hayes who looked like he was from Laverne and Shirley, like a plant that people invite to parties to wear funny clothes and jump around and make things ‘kooky.’ Sort of forties clothes, really crewcut, about twenty-nine. He said, ‘I can get ya outta anything.’”

In the 2000s, Hayes collaborated with Bruce Cutler, best known as John Gotti's former attorney, in defending a pair of New York police officers accused of organized-crime-related murders.

In 2006, when Hayes published "Mouthpiece: A Life in—and Sometimes Just Outside—the Law" (written jointly with Susan Lehman), describing his career, Wolfe wrote its introduction.

He lives in Manhattan with his wife, a former model and actress, and his two children.

External links

*imdb name|id=0371000|name=Edward Hayes