Resourceful, Famed Personal-Injury Lawyer Harry Lipsig Dead At 93

NEW YORK - Personal-injury lawyer Harry Lipsig, who gained fame and riches by showing, among other things, that a man had been frightened to death by a car and that a hotel was to blame for a shark attack, has died at age 93.

He had suffered from heart disease and died Friday night at his Manhattan home, said his son-in-law and law partner, Mark Manus.

Mr. Lipsig became known as the "King of Torts" for a string of huge settlements in long-shot cases.

He continued practicing law into his 90s, though he had curtailed his courtroom appearances in recent years. His law firm recently settled for $15.5 million a lawsuit Lipsig filed less than a week after the 1990 Happy Land social club fire that killed 87 in the Bronx, N.Y.

Mr. Lipsig's victories included winning $740,000 for a heart-attack victim's family by convincing a jury the man had been frightened to death by a car that rolled onto his lawn.

Mr. Lipsig once proved that an Acapulco hotel was to blame when a shark attacked a guest because the hotel had dumped garbage into the ocean and failed to warn guests that it might attract sharks.

In 1988, Mr. Lipsig acted not only as a lawyer but also as an exhibit when he argued that a 71-year-old psychologist, run over by a police car driven by a drunken officer, could have earned money for years.

"He could well have outlived me," argued Mr. Lipsig, then 86. City lawyers settled the case for $1.25 million.

Also in 1988, Mr. Lipsig won a $25 million judgment against convicted strangler Robert Chambers on behalf of "preppie murder" victim Jennifer Levin. Mr. Lipsig made an estimated $6 million that year, Forbes magazine said, in placing him 15th on its list of America's top-paid trial lawyers.

In a 1989 interview, Mr. Lipsig dismissed claims that aggressive personal-injury lawyers have cost taxpayers millions in lawsuits against city governments and caused insurance rates to skyrocket.

Mr. Lipsig talked instead of his feelings for the plaintiff - "some poor devil torn to shreds or living in that vilest of prisons one can conceive . . . helpless on a hospital bed, paralyzed."

He also explained his courtroom demeanor: "Bore a jury and you've lost the case."