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Anthony Zappin. Courtesy of New York Post.
Summary: Ivy leaguer Anthony Zappin has been accused of beating his pregnant wife and plotting to destroy his former boss at a mega firm in Manhattan.
The story of Anthony Zappin’s divorce proceedings would make an epic episode of Law and Order.
The 30-year-old lawyer is embroiled in a messy divorce and custody battle, and his bizarre behavior during the ordeal has made headlines since this summer. In September, he was fined $10,000 for misconduct during this case’s proceedings. He represented himself, and Judge Matthew Cooper was appalled by his bully behavior towards Cooper and his wife’s attorney. According to New York Law Journal, Cooper said that Zappin had “done everything in his power to undermine the legal process and use his law license as a tool to threaten, bully and intimidate, seriously calling into question his fitness to practice law.”
On Tuesday, Zappin took a note from the movie Liar Liar and said he was assaulted in Judge Cooper’s courtroom. He was found sprawled on the floor, but three witnesses said an assault had never occurred. He had made it up.
Zappin had already turned off the judge with his aggressive and odd behavior, and on Thursday, more nasty details about the attorney emerged when the court shrink took the stand. Dr. Alan Revitz relayed Zappin’s wife’s testimony in court. He revealed that Zappin had planned a scheme to destroy his ex-boss who had fired him and that he had beat his wife while she was pregnant with their son.
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Zappin graduated from Columbia Law School in 2010 before he landed a job at New York’s Latham & Watkins, a Manhattan mega firm. Then he moved on to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, another mega firm. He was known as a legal pit bull for his aggressive nature in getting cases done.
But while a certain amount of ruthlessness will get you far in the legal world, Zappin’s aggression proved to be too much. He was fired by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, and then he allegedly created an account on the spousal cheating website, Ashley Madison, in his boss’ name to embarrass him.
Adding more to his monster-like behavior, Zappin allegedly beat his pregnant wife, Claire Comfort, a lawyer with Weil, Gotshal & Manges. The court shrink testified that Comfort said Zappin slapped her, hit her glasses, hit her head, and hit her stomach with car keys when he was angry.
Comfort said she was abused until she left him when their son was eight weeks old. Zappin countered that he was not abusive and in fact, she was the crazy one. As proof, he read a text that he sent to her where he said that she “bit my dick.”
Because the two accused each other of being crazy, Ravitz ordered psych evaluations on both parties. He found that the two of them were in a classic abusive relationship dynamic. Zappin was “narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive and histrionic” and Comfort had “an automatic need to obey others who assert authority” and low self-esteem.
Comfort is fighting for custody of their son, who is now two. She and Zappin both attended Columbia.
Source: http://nypost.com/2015/11/13/hostile-mega-lawyer-accused-of-abusing-pregnant-wife/
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/lawyer-feigned-assault-courtroom-judge-article-1.2430558
