Judge Orders Lawyer to Pay Violinist's Children

May 5th, 2005
By Karen Ali
Danbury News-Times

The children of legendary classical violinist Isaac Stern got some justice on Wednesday. What they did not get back is some expensive instruments and other heirlooms that were sold off after Stern's death in 2001.

A New Milford Probate Court judge had harsh words for the lawyer who sold the instruments while handling Stern’s estate and ordered him to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the three grown children.

Nevertheless, for Stern’s offspring, the result was as unsatisfying as a broken string in the middle of a Brahm’s violin concerto.

“It’s an outrage what happened here,” said Mark Schwartz, a lawyer from Pennsylvania who represented the three grown children, one of whom, Michael Stern, is the music director for the Kansas City Symphony.

“This is a guy who has children who are (orchestra) conductors,” said Schwartz. “Two are conductors. One is a rabbi. What they were looking for was not a fortune. What they were looking for was some memorabilia that any progeny deserves.”

Isaac Stern was born in Russia in 1920, and came with his parents to America as an infant. Raised in San Francisco, he started playing violin at age 8. A professional musician for six decades, he appeared on the world’s most prestigious concert stages and guided the careers of countless young musicians.

He performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center – and on PBS’s “Sesame Street.” He played on movie scores, helped launch the National Endowment for the Arts, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and, at the time of his death in 2001, had more than 100 recordings to his credit.

He also had a house in the Gaylordsville section of New Milford, an apartment in Manhattan, three children, five grandchildren, a third wife and, it seems, a sizable debt.

The apartment, the wife and the debt played major roles in the case brought by Stern’s children.

It seems that on his deathbed, Stern transferred his $3.5 million apartment to his wife, Linda Stern.  After Stern died at age 81, the executor of his will, William Moreorhead who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, auctioned off Stern’s personal items that had been intended for his children.

New Milford Probate Court Judge Martin Landgrebe, said the decision to exclude the apartment from the estate was wrong and that the selling of personal items caused the Stern children to suffer “incalculable personal loss.”

The judge also ripped Moorhead for paying himself $313,000, plus $250,000 Moorhead spent on the Central Park West apartment that he claimed was the office from which he managed the estate.

Moorhead charged the estate for the salary and benefits of a full-time office manager as well as cable TV, Internet access, three voice telephone lines, a fax line, telephone service, a New York Times subscription and maid service, according to the decision.

Joe Walsh, the Danbury lawyer for the Stern children, said they are happy “this part is over.”

Schwartz, the Pennsylvania lawyer, sounded less happy.

“The legacy was squandered,” said Schwartz, who noted that musical instruments that had been bequeathed to the children were sold off.  “ In the ordinary course of any estate this behavior is intolerable.  Here there were irreplaceable things.  They were this man’s musical legacy,” Schwartz said.

Moorhead and his wife had a very close relationship with Linda Stern,  and Linda Stern paid the $25,000 college tuition for Moorhead’s daughter, the according to the probate court decision.,

“I think Mr. Moorhead has a lot of explaining to do as to where Mr. Stern’s legacy went.  It is a horrendous shame the way that he acted,” Schwartz said.  “This is a nightmare for these kids.”

Stern’s children have said they had learned the items were on the market when a Philadelphia musician called Stern’s son, Michael, and inquired about a violin he saw for sale on the Internet.

“When you think about the stature of our father, to put it up on the Internet like some sort of glorified garage sale was unfortunate, to say the least,” Michael Stern told the BBC earlier this year.

The children never wanted to sue in the first place but had to when they realized how the estate was being managed, said Walsh, the Danbury lawyer.  Had they not sued, the three children-Shira and David are the others-would not have received any money nor would they have received any of their father’s instruments, Walsh said.

“We’re doing this because this individual (Moorhead), in the guise of doing what he should be doing, took advantage of a situation, “Shira Stern, a rabbi, told the BBC.

Walsh said the final straw was when the children learned that one of their father’s friends had not been paid $1 million the Sterns owed him.  “They were not looking for money for themselves,” Walsh said.

Sources said Linda Stern received the Stern’s house in the Gaylordsville section of New Milford and she also received several million dollars from Stern that were provisions Stern made for her outside of the estate.

The new executor of the estate, Steven Ayres, of Stamford, said Wednesday he hadn’t read the decision and was unable to comment.