As Mediator in Mets Case, Mario Cuomo Has Practice

Mario M. Cuomo, the former New York governor, has made a career of brokering solutions to tense standoffs, including housing crises, budget battles and a prison inmate takeover.

In the coming weeks, Cuomo’s skills will be tested anew when he tries to resolve the bitter $1 billion legal fight between the owners of the Mets and the trustee trying to recoup money for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s financial fraud.

After months of private talks, the case spilled into public view when the complaint against Fred Wilpon and other Mets owners was unsealed two weeks ago. Both sides have fired accusatory salvos, which preceded the decision by Burton R. Lifland, the United States bankruptcy judge overseeing the lawsuit, to appoint an “appropriately experienced mediator” to coax them toward a settlement.

“This thing is as complicated and volatile as any case,” said Joseph Bellacosa, who taught at St. John’s University Law School with Cuomo and was later appointed to the New York State Court of Appeals by Cuomo as governor. “But he’ll make them understand that whatever they give up will make them feel that something was gained.”

Cuomo will not be able to force the adversaries to settle, a handicap in a case that could force the sale of the Mets. And the widely watched negotiations will also have implications for the banks that lent the Mets money, Major League Baseball and the many individuals and companies also being sued by the trustee, Irving H. Picard.

But legal experts, colleagues, friends and former rivals said that in his more than four decades as a lawyer, politician and peacemaker, Cuomo had become expert at synthesizing mountains of information and grasping the broader legal context while doggedly pushing for results.

Meyer S. Frucher, a friend and adviser, said that Cuomo’s “persuasion is backed by the facts.”

“He’s verbal, he’s articulate and he’s been around,” Frucher said.

In the strictest sense, Cuomo is not a full-time mediator. Since leaving government in 1994, he has been a counsel to Willkie Farr & Gallagher. His most notable achievement as a corporate mediator involved the establishment of a $500 million fund for victims in an asbestos case.

But the label of mediator is too narrow for Cuomo, whose career has been notable for its range. While Cuomo and the participants in the dispute between the Mets owners and the trustee representing the victims of the Madoff scheme declined to discuss the coming negotiations, Cuomo’s record as a negotiator provides insight into how the case may proceed.

Cuomo emerged as a public figure in the late 1960s as the lawyer for residents in Corona, Queens, whose homes were to be condemned by the city to make way for a school and athletic field. His solution — which saved most of the houses but required some to be moved — impressed Richard Aurelio, then a deputy mayor.

“Cuomo was upset that the city was going to destroy a powerless, lovely Italian-American community,” Aurelio recalled. “We sat on a couch in my office and he drew his plan on a napkin. His solution, that we could preserve the community, was a great idea.”

In the more intractable, fiery housing dispute in nearby Forest Hills in 1972, Aurelio persuaded Mayor John V. Lindsay to name Cuomo the mediator. Local residents in Forest Hills, a middle-income neighborhood, opposed construction of three 24-story towers for low-income people, fearing a rise in crime.

Demonstrators picketed and compared Lindsay to Adolf Hitler. Cuomo’s compromise — to reduce the buildings to 12 stories, with a percentage of apartments for elderly residents — was assailed by its opponents, including the city’s Housing Authority, but it passed the city’s Board of Estimate.

“It was very emotional, a far cry from Madoff,” said Jerry Birbach, a leader in the fight against the project, who objected to the compromise. “Mario didn’t crush heads. But it wasn’t mediation. The deal was thrown upon us.”

After defusing standoffs in Queens, Cuomo was appointed secretary of state, where he represented New York State in a land claims dispute with American Indians upstate. He later served as lieutenant governor to Gov. Hugh L. Carey before being elected governor in 1982.

In some ways, the governor’s job involves mediating different sides of issues. But Mel Miller, a former speaker of the State Assembly, said that Cuomo was a skilled problem-solver, not a neutral mediator. “He is intuitive enough to come up with interesting solutions,” Miller said. “But it wasn’t because he was the governor; it’s the traits he has.”

Less than two weeks into Cuomo’s first term, those traits were put to the test when inmates at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility, angry at crowded conditions, took 17 guards hostage.

Cuomo quickly took control of the negotiations at a command post in the World Trade Center. Mindful of the violence that characterized a prisoner uprising at Attica a dozen years earlier, Cuomo made clear that the state would act prudently as long as its authority was respected. After 53 tense hours, the guards were released unharmed, and good to his word, Cuomo set about addressing conditions at the prison.

While the prison standoff ended in days, Cuomo has spent nine years as the mediator — appointed by Judge Lifland as well — trying to resolve the claims of victims of asbestos-related diseases against Travelers Property Casualty Corporation in the bankruptcy of Johns-Manville Corporation. Lifland approved the $500 million settlement fund in 2004, but Cuomo has since dealt with appeals. “He’s been very patient, probably more so than I would,” said Joseph Rice, who represents plaintiffs against Travelers. “I’ve sensed some frustration in him, but he hasn’t walked out saying, ‘You guys are crazy.’ ”

Daniel C. McElhinney, who worked with Cuomo on the Travelers mediation at Willkie Farr and has been a court-appointed special adviser to him since leaving that firm, said, “If he sees a hole in your argument, or if your argument is weak, he is effective in a lawyerly way that’s not demeaning or demoralizing in laying it plain on the table.”

Cuomo, 78, is unlikely to spend years trying to persuade the Mets’ owners and Picard to settle. Picard has larger cases to pursue, including those against several banks. Lifland presumably pushed the Mets and Picard into mediation because he wants to avoid a long trial, legal experts said. And the Mets’ owners, who maintain they will be vindicated, do not want the legal tug of war to detract from their team, which has its own on-field issues.

“He’s smart enough to be a realist,” said Milton Mollen, a former state appeals judge who knows Cuomo well. “It’s not going to be an easy case, because it’s a big number.”