Subway Hero Sues His Lawyer

A quick-acting commuter who became an instant hero after saving a teenager who fell in front of an oncoming subway train has sued a lawyer he says manipulated him into signing an unfair, one-sided contract.

Wesley Autrey Sr. says in court papers he signed the contract Feb. 12 without reading it, agreeing that lawyer Diane L. Kleiman would represent and advise him in financial and other matters stemming from his subway heroism.

Autrey, a 50-year-old Bronx construction worker, says in court papers that the contract is "a one-sided agreement" he was induced to sign by "fraud" and that it gives the lion's share of everything he earns to Kleiman and her business partner, Marco Antonio Esposito, operator of an entertainment production company.

Autrey's lawsuit asks the court to declare the contract void.

Kleiman, a former prosecutor, denied on Monday that she had cheated Autrey. She said Autrey and several family members read the contract after keeping it for several days.

"Somebody made him a better offer," Kleiman said, speculating on why Autrey wanted to get rid of her. "They (Autrey's family) are playing people off against each other."

Autrey's lawsuit, filed Friday, says the contract gives Kleiman and Esposito exclusive rights to exploit his name and reputation and gives them ownership of intellectual property rights to his story.

The contract also gives Kleiman and Esposito the right to receive all gross receipts from commercial exploitation of Autrey's name and to keep half those receipts, whether or not they helped generate the money, court papers say.

Autrey must give up his right to a trial by jury in any dispute with Kleiman and instead go to arbitration, in which he could be required to pay her legal fees, court papers say.

Autrey grabbed public attention on Jan. 2, 2007, after Cameron Hollopeter, a 19-year-old student at the New York Film Academy, suffered a seizure and fell onto the subway tracks at the 137th Street/City College station.

Standing on the subway platform with his two young daughters and scores of other commuters as a train approached, Autrey saw Hollopeter convulsing on the tracks. He jumped down and pulled the teen into the 12-inch-deep drainage trough between the tracks and lay on top of him as the train passed over their heads.

The train grazed the top of Autrey's hat, and he and Hollopeter remained under a car for 20 minutes while MTA workers shut off the electrified third rail.

At a dinner for notable New Yorkers at The Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Feb. 5, Kleiman introduced herself to Autrey's 33-year-old son and said she was available to be his father's lawyer, court papers say.

Autrey said Esposito presented him the contract in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 12, shortly before he was to go to the White House and meet President Bush. He said Kleiman had already signed it. He said he felt pressured, and he signed.

Kleiman said the Autreys had contacted her to represent them "and now they're portraying us in a bad light. We're out of pocket thousands of dollars and have not charged them anything."

"If they had just let me know they didn't want me to represent them, then we could have sat down and talked," Kleiman said. "I don't want to represent anyone who doesn't want to work with me."

Autrey's new lawyer, Barbara Mehlsack, said she would have no comment on the case.
By Samuel Maull