critics was New York University law professor Burt Neuborne, who had said on record: "We essentially worked around him...I mean, he was, he was there, but, but he played, if I tell you zero, I mean zero role in developing the legal theory, in presenting the legal theory, and in participating as a lawyer." Neuborne, a leading human rights lawyer, believed that it was time to set the record straight: In 1998, Gizella Weisshaus, the named plaintiff in the lawsuit against Swiss banks, opted out of that historic settlement because she felt that her attorneys were more interested in paying themselves millions of dollars, even before some of the survivors had received any money. On April 8, 1998, Weisshauss filed an attorney ethics complaint, claiming that Fagan, her lawyer at the time, held back $82,583.04 belonging to her from the estate of her deceased cousin Jack Oestreicher. Hal R. Lieberman, from Departmental Disciplinary Committee, Supreme Court, Appellate Division, responded on May 6, 1998, that in this "ongoing criminal proceeding" the outcome of the disciplinary investigation should be awaited. In 2000, Fagan represented some 82,000 Holocaust victims and family members (many of whom later accused him of negligence), suing governments and companies in Germany and Austria based on the Alien Tort Claims Act. 2002 slavery class action lawsuit In April 2002, Fagan filed a class action lawsuit against eighteen companies, including FleetBoston, CSX Corporation, Aetna, Union Pacific Railroad, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Lehman Brothers, accusing the companies to have "unjustly enriched (themselves) through profits earned either directly or indirectly from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery between 1619 and 1865, as well as post-Emancipation slavery through the 1960s". In January 2004, Judge Charles R Norgle dismissed the lawsuit because Fagan failed to establish a clear link between plaintiffs and the companies. 2002 apartheid lawsuit against Swiss and U.S. banks According to news reports by CNN, the "maverick lawyer" attempted to file a $50 billion class action lawsuit against Swiss-based UBS and Credit Suisse and U.S.-based Citicorp Inc. for providing funds to the South African apartheid government during 1985 and 1993. Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruedi Christen dismissed the lawsuit with the following words: "It's another unjust attack against Switzerland," an opinion shared in Switzerland, where citizens told Fagan to "Go home!" and "Wash your dirty linen elsewhere", when he held a news conference on Zurich's Paradeplatz, home of the two