Louis Wolfson, Central to the Fall of a Justice, Is Dead at 95
Louis E. Wolfson, a self-made industrialist and financier whose legal troubles were central to the resignation of a Supreme Court justice and who later achieved a cliffhanging sweep of the 1978 Triple Crown as a thoroughbred owner, died Sunday at his home in Bal Harbour, Fla. He was 95.
On both counts, Mr. Wolfson’s mark has proved lasting. The Triple Crown victory of his colt, Affirmed, has not been matched in the three decades since, and Justice Abe Fortas, who stepped down in 1969, remains the only member of the Supreme Court in modern times to have been forced from the bench amid a public outcry.
Louis Elwood Wolfson was born in St. Louis on Jan. 28, 1912, and attended the University of Georgia. Rising from his immigrant father’s scrap-metal lot in Florida, he started with $10,000 in borrowed capital, traded big and bigger in war surplus materials, and put together a diverse group of industrial and commercial holdings.
Total assets under his control once came to an estimated quarter of a billion dollars, and he drew national attention in 1955 with an unsuccessful effort at a hostile takeover of Montgomery Ward, then the country’s second-largest mail-order house.
But his career in high finance effectively ended with a tortuous legal case in the mid-1960s involving his sale of unregistered stock in a company he controlled. Wending its way to the Supreme Court, the case made him a pivotal figure in the downfall of Justice Fortas.
A report in Life magazine disclosed that in 1966, the year after Justice Fortas had been appointed to the court by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Wolfson’s foundation had started paying him what was to be a $20,000 annual retainer for life, in return for unspecified consultation....
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On both counts, Mr. Wolfson’s mark has proved lasting. The Triple Crown victory of his colt, Affirmed, has not been matched in the three decades since, and Justice Abe Fortas, who stepped down in 1969, remains the only member of the Supreme Court in modern times to have been forced from the bench amid a public outcry.
Louis Elwood Wolfson was born in St. Louis on Jan. 28, 1912, and attended the University of Georgia. Rising from his immigrant father’s scrap-metal lot in Florida, he started with $10,000 in borrowed capital, traded big and bigger in war surplus materials, and put together a diverse group of industrial and commercial holdings.
Total assets under his control once came to an estimated quarter of a billion dollars, and he drew national attention in 1955 with an unsuccessful effort at a hostile takeover of Montgomery Ward, then the country’s second-largest mail-order house.
But his career in high finance effectively ended with a tortuous legal case in the mid-1960s involving his sale of unregistered stock in a company he controlled. Wending its way to the Supreme Court, the case made him a pivotal figure in the downfall of Justice Fortas.
A report in Life magazine disclosed that in 1966, the year after Justice Fortas had been appointed to the court by President Lyndon B. Johnson, Mr. Wolfson’s foundation had started paying him what was to be a $20,000 annual retainer for life, in return for unspecified consultation....