Litigation resumes in dealings with fortune of late Max Farash
Steve Orr
March 12, 2010
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20100312/NEWS01/3120335/1002/NEWS/Litigation-resumes-in-dealings-with-fortune-of-late-Max-Farash
Nearly two weeks after the death of Rochester real estate tycoon Max M. Farash, the mourning period has ended and the litigation period has resumed.

In recent days, new lawyers have joined the case, requests have been made to delay some proceedings and other requests made to move those proceedings to a new judge. Behind the scenes, legal work needed to transfer almost all of Farash’s wealth to his family foundation has begun.

And Farash’s grand-nephew, Matthew Aroesty, is scheduled to be arraigned today on a felony charge that he misappropriated thousands of dollars from his great-uncle’s company.

Farash, who was 95 when he died in a nursing home on Feb. 28, built a fortune worth an estimated $400 million. He had been declared mentally incapacitated three years earlier, and his business affairs managed by a court-appointed guardian, James C. Gocker.

The guardianship ended when Farash died, but Gocker now is trustee of a trust that will manage Farash’s assets. He said he was handling “all the issues you deal with when someone passes away,” though his principal task was determining “how best to make this transition to the foundation so the highest value is actually transferred to the foundation. That is a not-uncomplicated matter.”

If estimates of the size of Farash’s fortune are accurate, it likely would become the largest charitable foundation in the Rochester area, making millions of dollars of gifts annually.

Gocker, a Rochester lawyer, is one of several parties who brought a pair of civil suits against Aroesty and Lynn Farash, the only child of Max Farash and his late wife, Marian. The suits, filed in January, seek recovery of more than $12 million of Max and Marian Farash’s money that their daughter and grand-nephew are accused of diverting for their own use.

The grand-larceny charge against Aroesty similarly alleges he used more than $50,000 of Farash Corp. money for his own purposes in 2002 and 2003, when he was an executive at Farash Corp.

Lawyers for Aroesty have asked for an indefinite delay in the two civil cases, saying in court filings that he cannot afford to defend against both criminal and civil charges at the same time, and he likely would have to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination if questioned in the civil cases.

Lynn Farash, meanwhile, has filed papers seeking to delay action in the case for 90 days, in part because she had been unable to help with her defense while mourning for her father.

The extension also would allow her new team of lawyers to get up to speed.

The team includes Harvey Corn, a Manhattan trusts and estates lawyer who helped defend the son of the late New York socialite Brooke Astor. Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall, was convicted last year of defrauding his late mother.
Corn said Thursday that he could not yet comment on the case.

State Supreme Court Justice John Ark, who oversaw the guardianship for its final 17 months, has scheduled an April 1 hearing on the delay requests.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the two cases, however, have filed papers asking that they be transferred to Justice Kenneth Fisher.

Gocker said the move was justified because Fisher already has a similar case involving Robert Aroesty, Matthew’s brother.

Robert Aroesty, who also was a Farash Corp. executive, sued the company last year for wrongly firing him and denying him retirement and other benefits. The company countersued, claiming he had engaged in the same sort of improper conduct as his brother and Lynn Farash. That case is pending.