Arthur Kramer (January 10, 1927 − January 26, 2008) was the founding partner of influential law firm Kramer Levin. Kramer retired from the firm in 1996. He was found alone by a ski patrol in Sun Valley, Idaho on January 13, 2008 and then died from a stroke on January 26. He was 81 when he died, having lived in Stamford, Connecticut.[1]
Kramer's relationship with his brother, playwright Larry Kramer, moved into the public sphere with Larry's 1984 play, The Normal Heart. In the play, Larry portrays Arthur ("Ben Weeks") as more concerned with building his $2 million house in Connecticut than in helping his brother's cause. Humorist Calvin Trillin, a friend of both Larry and Arthur, once called The Normal Heart "the play about the building of [Arthur's] house." Anemona Hartocollis observed in the New York Times that "their story came to define an era for hundreds of thousands of theatergoers."[2] Arthur, who had been his younger brother's protector against the parents they both disliked, couldn't find it in his heart to reject Larry, but also couldn't accept his homosexuality. This caused years of arguing and stretches of silence between the siblings. In the 1980s, Larry wanted Arthur's firm to represent the fledgling Gay Men's Health Crisis, a nonprofit Larry organized. Arthur said he had to clear it with his firm's intake committee. Larry saw this as a cop-out — rightly, as Arthur said later.[3] Larry called for a gay boycott of MCI, a prominent Kramer Levin client, which Arthur saw as a personal affront. In 1992, Colorado voters passed Amendment 2, an anti-gay rights referendum, and Arthur refused to cancel a ski trip to Aspen. [2]
Throughout their disagreements, they still stayed close, remaining each other's touchstones. Larry writes of their relationship in The Normal Heart: "The brothers love each other a great deal; [Arthur's] approval is essential to [Larry]."[4]
In 2001, Arthur gave Yale a $1 million grant to establish the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, a program focusing on gay history.[5]
Over a course of 5 months in 2005, Arthur acquired seven insurance policies totaling $56.2 million of life insurance from three different insurance companies through two insurance trusts and designated his adult children, Liza Kramer, Andrew Kramer and Rebecca Kramer as the beneficiaries of the trusts. Before the first premium was paid to the policies, his children immediately sold their trust interests to hedge fund investors for an immediate profit of over $700,000. Shortly after Arthur's death in 2008, his widow, Alice Kramer, sued in New York federal court alleging that Arthur had violated New York State's insurable interest law when the policies were originally acquired and thus, the $56.2 million should be paid to her rather than to the investors who had purchased the policy interests from his children. Her claim was that Arthur had never intended to benefit his children when the policies were taken out but rather were procured by the investors. The lawsuit received national attention and the issue of the proper interpretation of New York State insurable interest law was certified by the federal court to New York State's highest court. In a 5-2 decision issued by the New York Court of Appeals on November 17, 2010, the majority ruled against Alice Kramer and held that New York State's insurable interest law is not violated when an insured takes out an insurance policy with an intent to have the policy resold to investors. The Court further concluded that in order for Alice Kramer to continue her claim against the investors for the insurance that her children had sold, she would have to prove that Arthur was subject to coercion or other nefarious conduct from the investors. Mrs. Kramer was represented by Stuart Friedman and Andrew Wittenstein of the New York law firm Friedman & Wittenstein in bringing her unsuccessful lawsuit.
www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/decisions/2010/nov10/176opn10.pdf