Shira Scheindlin disqualified Fagan from representing the plaintiffs, after noting that Fagan, who had filed for personal bankruptcy, had a personal interest in the litigation's outcome and made false representations to the court. Scheindlin slapped the attorney with a $5,000 fine. Fagan continues to seek winnings [2009] in this case with a former partner in the case that through their failed Florida partnership representing victims in the Louis J Pearlman fraud, allowed Fagan to vindictively sell his services to victims of that fraud. Fagan eventually deserted these clients after severely hurting their chances of any recovery due to his obstructionist and disingenuous involvement in their cases. 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami victims lawsuit In 2005, he initiated a lawsuit on behalf of 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake victims. The lawsuit was directed against the Thai government, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the French hotel group Sofitel for insufficient quake and tsunami warnings. 2006 Borat lawsuit In 2006, Fagan initiated legal proceedings, suing the makers of the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan for $30 million in damages on behalf of two inhabitants of the Romanian village of Glod, Dâmbovita for human rights violations. He planned to submit lawsuits in New York and Florida state courts, as well as in Frankfurt, Germany. Fagan said that he hoped to "teach Hollywood a very expensive lesson". The lawsuit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in a hearing in early December 2006 on the grounds that the charges were too vague to stand up in court. Fagan planned to refile. Malpractice Fagan has been accused of abandoning personal injury clients in favor of the more lucrative Holocaust reparations cases. One personal injury client sued Fagan, and won a $3.2 million malpractice award.<ref>Lin Anthony (August 12, 2004). . New York Law Journal. archived from the original on September 30, 2007.</ref> Fagan has been accused of having wasted over $500,000 of his clients' money. In 1998, Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. of Federal District Court dismissed the federal lawsuit of Mr. Ortiz, noting that Fagan, his attorney, had "failed to prosecute" it for three years and had ignored court orders. The lawsuit of Ortiz, then a 49-year-old truck driver involved in a traffic accident, started in 1994, when Fagan filed a $35 million lawsuit on his behalf in federal court in Brooklyn and State Supreme Court,