America's foremost bankruptcy lawyer dies

Harvey Miller, the foremost US bankruptcy lawyer, whose cases included Lehman Brothers, General Motors, WorldCom and Continental Airlines, has died at the age of 82.

Miller joined Weil Gotshal & Manges as a partner in 1969 at a time when bankruptcy was not a prominent field for major firms. That changed during Miller's four decades at Weil.

Ira Millstein, a friend and colleague, said he persuaded his fellow partners at Weill that they should hire Mr Miller as an "outstanding" young lawyer, despite his specialism not having much renown.

"I finally convinced my partners to tip our toe in the water," said Mr Millstein. "The rest is history. Harvey became almost an immediate success."

Outside of practising law, Mr Miller spent a large amount of time lecturing at Columbia Law School, Yale Law School and New York University School of Law.

In 1975, a fellow lawyer sitting in on one of his NYU classes objected to Mr Miller identifying WT Grant, a retail chain, as a candidate for bankruptcy. Mr Miller defended himself, saying he had to educate his students, and shortly afterwards WT Grant became the first $1bn "Chapter 11" bankruptcy, a reference to the law that allows reorganisations of distressed companies. Mr Miller was hired to represent the creditors.

His career hit new heights every time a famous company sank, with bankruptcies including American Airlines and Texaco, but his biggest case came late in his career, the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers, whose $691bn of assets made it in the largest US bankruptcy in history.

Days before the September 15 filing, a pivotal moment in the financial crisis, Lehman's advisors, still believing a bankruptcy was only a remote possibility, thought to call a lawyer just in case. Mr Miller had long been the obvious choice.

The case has since seen Weil and restructuring specialist Alvarez & Marsal take more than $2bn in fees as the court unravelled claims on the complex investment bank. On the fifth anniversary of the collapse Mr Miller criticised regulators' decision to allow Lehman to fail. "Lehman was a seismic event that ignited a global conflagration," he said. "The actions during the weekend of September 12-15 were the result of a serious miscalculation."

He also worked on an almost equally famous and much speedier bankruptcy, that of the government-orchestrated restructuring of General Motors which was completed in a record 40 days, confounding sceptics - including executives at the Detroit-based company - who had warned the carmaker would slowly wither during a protracted bankruptcy.

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Some of his courtroom adversaries found him too confrontational, including one famous incident where he grabbed a rival's collar in a judge's chamber.

Mr Millstein said: "He very rarely beat around the bush or covered up with glittering niceties. His strength was the ability to deliver the facts and tell people where he stood and where the company stood. If he was your friend, which he was for me, it was forever."

Born in New York in 1933, Miller graduated from Columbia Law School in 1959 and in 1963 joined the small law firm, Seligson & Morris, which also employed Martin Lipton, Leonard Rosen and George Katz, who went on to found Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Miller, who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Loh Gehrig's Disease, is survived by Ruth, his wife of 60 years.

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