Hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein, who raised eyebrows with his $147 million purchase of an oceanfront estate in East Hampton last May, is now suing the estate’s trustees for $253,000, which he claims he lost over the purchase.
The suit is the result of a lawsuit also filed against the trustees last summer by the Corcoran Group, which claims it was chosen as the broker and then cut out of the final deal, resulting in a lost commission of $8.82 million. Mr. Rosenstein was named as having colluded with the trustees but was ultimately dropped from the suit, which is still pending.
He is now suing for the legal costs associated with the Corcoran lawsuit. His suit also reportedly claims that the trustees released his name to brokers and the press—breaching a non-disclosure portion in their contract and resulting in widespread reports of his purchase and ultimately “negative publicity” for his family, according to The Real Deal. In recent years, most multimillion-dollar home purchases in the Hamptons have been conducted through LLCs, which keep buyers and sellers anonymous.
Mr. Rosenstein’s counsel, Matthew Dontzin, David Fleissig and Jason Kolbe of Dontzin Nagy & Fleissig, were unavailable for comment.
The 16-acre estate in East Hampton is a combination of three separate lots: 60, 62 and 64 Further Lane, a road well known for its pricey mansions. According to the East Hampton Town assessors’ office, the largest of the three, which has an oceanfront house on it, is 62 Further Lane, at 8.6 acres. The other two are 3.7 acres apiece.
Christopher Browne, of Tweedy, Browne, a New York investment firm, had owned the property until his death in December 2009. The estate went to his partner Andrew Gordon, who died in September 2013. It apparently reverted to Mr. Browne’s family and was overseen by trustees.
Mr. Rosenstein, of the investment firm Jana Partners, scored the 29th slot in Forbes’s 2012 list of the highest-earning hedge fund managers, at $140 million. Before founding Jana in 2001, he ran a private equity firm called Sagaponack Partners.
on Feb 23, 2015