George Reycraft, corporate litigator
MIAMI -- George Dewey Reycraft, a leading Wall Street lawyer and a former Justice Department trustbuster, died yesterday in Miami. He was 79.
A Key Largo resident and New Haven native,
he rose to national prominence in 1959 as the federal government's chief litigator in a long antitrust fight with DuPont and
He successfully argued that DuPont's 43 percent stake in the automaker constituted a "tendency toward monopoly" in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and DuPont was forced to give up its stock.
After joining the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taftin 1963, Mr. Reycraft won an investors' suit against Arthur Andersen over millions lost in the Bernard Cornfeld mutual fund scandal.
He also handled an investors' complaint in 1987 against financier Ivan F. Boesky and his main underwriter, Drexel Burnham Lambert. Boesky later pleaded guilty in an insider-trading case.
Mr. Reycraft retired in 1994 as cochairman of his law firm and chairman of its litigation department.
