One of Henry II's attackers teams with a nephew
For 34 years Henry Ford II has been the driving force behind the Ford Motor Co. Since he took control of the then ailing corporation as a young man in the 1940s, he has devoted his prodigious energies to helping build Ford into a worldwide auto empire with 495,000 employees and annual sales of $43 billion. Now, at 61, as he prepares to step aside as chief executive, he is finding himself embroiled in a series of bitter legal skirmishes.
One cause of Ford's difficulties is Roy Cohn, the Manhattan lawyer. Since his days as a get-the-dirt investigator for Senator Joseph McCarthy, Cohn has built a deserved reputation as a maverick who relishes the pursuit of the powerful and is as ready to do his pursuing in newsprint as in the courts. For about a year, Cohn has been pressing a suit charging the motor company's boss with a variety of improprieties and seeking a still undetermined amount in damages. Last week Cohn got an assist from a fairly surprising quarter: Henry Ford's nephew. Benson Ford Jr., 29, who is already involved in a legal battle to gain control of a $7.5 million inheritance, including roughly $6 million in Ford stock, announced that he was planning several suits against Ford officials. His choice of counsel: Roy Cohn. The lawyer describes his new client as yet another stockholder "who wants to end the autocratic regime" at Ford.
Cohn denies that he has any personal dislike of the company's chairman, but readily admits that "I'm anti-Establishment when it comes to people like Ford." With his great power, Cohn says, Henry Ford "represents an era of American business that supposedly went out of style with the turn of the century." Cohn's suit was brought on behalf of a handful of stockholders. The suit charges, among other things, that Henry Ford, who scarcely needs money: 1) pocketed $2 million from the "highest officials of the Philippines government" in exchange for building a stamping plant in the islands; and 2) took $750,000 from Canteen Corp. in return for a food concession at Ford plants.
Ford has vehemently denied all the charges, and the suit has had little visible support from the firm's other 335,400 stockholders. At the annual meeting last year, Cohn attempted to shout accusations at Ford, but was frequently booed by other shareholders, many of them present or former company employees.
Last month the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court threw out Cohn's suit, saying that it should have been brought in Michigan, where the company is headquartered. Cohn, who vows to pursue the suit, is pondering whether to appeal the decision. Mean while, he has been trying to keep the case alive in the press.
Last week, after lunching with Cohn and Benson Ford, New York Times Columnist William Safire wrote a savory story. He reported that New York Governor Hugh Carey, the longtime suitor of Ford's daughter Anne, had prevailed on Frank Sinatra to meet with Ford. Safire speculated broadly that Ford hoped that Sinatra's gangland contacts would get to Cohn's underworld law clients and persuade the lawyer to lay off. The column raised such a furor that Safire rather grudgingly wrote another piece reporting the many disclaimers.