Feud between brothers leads to $894M verdict

An end has come to a long-running drama between two half-brothers who have been battling over their dead father’s estate.

A Palm Beach County circuit court judge has ruled that a verdict over their father’s fortune still stands: One of the largest verdicts in recent Florida history came in at $740 million. But now, years later, there is more than $154 million in interest attached, bringing the tally to more than $894 million, lawyers said.

“It’s kind of Biblical,” said the winning brother’s lawyer, Miami-based attorney Craig Downs, referring to the family fight.

The clash unfolded when Mehmet Salih Tatlici, the builder of the famous Tat Towers in Istanbul, died in 2009 in his homeland of Turkey.

The billionaire was ranked by Forbes magazine as one of Turkey’s wealthiest people. Of his heirs — three living children, and grandchildren — the real estate tycoon’s sons included Mehmet, from his first marriage, and Ugur, from his second marriage.

Since his death 14 years ago, the family has been fighting over the $4 billion estate that spans from Turkey to Palm Beach County. Attorneys said in Palm Beach County, the rift included a mansion in Boca Raton, the Signature building in Boca Raton, plots of property in the town of Palm Beach, and a newly constructed home in West Boynton.

In 2018, Mehmet Tatlici sued Ugur Tatlici in Palm Beach County Circuit Court over defamation claims and related business losses.

Outside of the defamation case, fighting involves U.S. bank accounts, as well as the properties.

In the defamation case, Mehmet Tatlici alleged that years earlier his half-brother had created an online news website to destroy his reputation and falsely accuse him of being associated with the terrorist organization FETO, which was allegedly involved in the attempted overthrow of the Turkish government in 2016.

In 2019, a jury sided with Mehmet Tatlici and awarded him a $740 million judgment. But Ugur Tatlici said he never even knew about the verdict, hadn’t participated in the trial to present his side, and in 2020 hired a lawyer to fight it.

His attorneys argued the Palm Beach County court had no authority over Ugur Tatlici, who wasn’t doing business in Florida, and Ugur Tatlici has had no ties to the website described in his half-brother’s lawsuit.

Mehmet Tatlici’s lawyer said Ugur Tatlici’s own attorney testified that he knew about the lawsuit, and that Ugur Tatlici chose to ignore it until he learned about the $740 million verdict.

But Ugur Tatlici’s lawyer said it was all improper: “He was never served with the lawsuit,” said Ugur Tatlici’s attorney, Steven Goerke, on Friday. “This is a battle with one foreign citizen against another foreign citizen seeking to collect damages allegedly incurred in a foreign country.”

The National Law Journal ranked the $740 million verdict as the highest verdict in Florida, and the seventh biggest in the U.S., for that year.

On Jan. 31, a Palm Beach County circuit court judge rejected Ugur Tatlici’s motion to withdraw the judgment because of lack of notice of the trial and lack of jurisdiction. So instead of $740 million, Ugur Tatlici now has to pay interest at a rate of 6.77% per year, ballooning the final tab to $894,468,833, attorneys for both sides said.

“Our client has made efforts to bring the family back together,” said Jeremy Friedman, Mehmet Tatlici’s Jacksonville-based attorney. “They continue to fight, through the legal system.”

The Turkish courts ruled Ugur Tatlici and his mother was supposed to get 71.875% of the estate and his brother was only supposed to inherit 9.375%, according to Goerke. “My client’s position is ‘somebody is not happy,’ and that’s why all this litigation has happened,” Goerke said.

Attorney Jack Scarola, whose firm helped win the rejection to vacate the original judgment, said “substantial portions of the assets are in real estate, some in Palm Beach County.”

He said to collect the entire judgment means targeting assets not just in Florida, but in Turkey and the central Mediterranean country of Malta.

“We are quite optimistic we are going to be able to collect this judgment,” he said.