Jan 16, 2007 6:54 pm US/Eastern
Child Killer Joel Steinberg Ordered To Pay $15M
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
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Joel Steinberg (file photo).
Joel Steinberg, the disbarred lawyer who served 17 years in prison for killing his 6-year-old illegally adopted daughter, must pay $15 million to the girl's birth mother, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
In its decision for Michele Launders, the state Supreme Court's Appellate Division wrote Steinberg's "intentional and deliberate abuse and manslaughter of a defenseless little girl earned him the cognomen 'monster' almost 20 years ago."
"Now the revisitation of the horror that was Lisa Steinberg's life continues to elicit a palpable sense of outrage," the appeals court wrote. "We therefore affirm the award for punitive damages."
Steinberg had gotten Lisa as a days-old infant from Launders, then an unwed Long Island teen who paid him $500 in legal fees to arrange an adoption. Instead, Steinberg took the baby home to Hedda Nussbaum, his live-in companion.
After Lisa's death at Steinberg's hands on Nov. 5, 1987, Launders, now 43, filed wrongful-death lawsuits against Steinberg, Nussbaum and New York City in 1988. The action against Nussbaum was settled. The city settled with Launders in 1999 for $985,000 while admitting no wrongdoing.
During a three-day trial of Steinberg's case that state Supreme Court Justice Louis B. York heard without a jury, forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden testified that Lisa absorbed multiple injuries to her body and brain, with internal cranial bleeding, before her death.
Baden said her brain swelled until it was compressed by her skull. This cut off oxygen to the brain cells, leading to a coma and to Lisa's death three days after Steinberg hit her in his West 10th Street apartment.
York awarded Launders $5 million for Lisa's pain and suffering just before her death, $5 million for pain and suffering "as a battered child" and $5 million in punitive damages.
Steinberg argued in appellate papers that because Lisa died relatively quickly, after "at most eight hours of pain and suffering," the money award was excessive and should be reduced.
The appeals judges, in affirming York's award, wrote: "We disagree, and in simply so stating acknowledge that sometimes words fail even those who use the language to render judgments on a daily basis."
Steinberg, 65, was released from prison in June 2004, when Lisa would have been 23. He is on parole until 2012.
Launders' lawyer, Wayne J. Schaefer, said his client had filed the lawsuit to make sure Steinberg was held accountable in civil and criminal courts. He said he does not believe Steinberg has any significant assets.
Schaefer said that he argued the case orally before the Appellate Division but Steinberg, acting as his own lawyer, did not appear in person but submitted his case in legal briefs.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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