$hady TV ethics lawyer cheated us: ex-partners

A legalethics expert for CNN cheated his former law partners out of an estimated $3 million in fees from a wrongfulimprisonment case he secretly pursued on the side, a Manhattan lawsuit charges.

Celebrity lawyer Paul Callan left local law firm Callan, Koster, Brady & Nagler in January but, before exiting, he started working with an outside attorney to repre sent Jonathan Fleming in a bid for exoneration.

Fleming eventually won $6.25 million from the city after being wrongly imprisoned for nearly 25 years for the murder of a childhood buddy. Callan and the lawyer with whom he worked on the case split a $2 million cut, the suit states.

Callan’s former partners say he “betrayed” them by shutting them out of approximately $3 million in fees from the city’s settlement and Fleming’s pending claim against the state, according to their lawyer, Larry Hutcher.

“Callan’s doubledealing is ironic, considering he holds himself out on public television . . . as a socalled expert on attorneys’ ethics,” the Manhattan Supreme Court suit says.

Callan, 65, claims he left the firm to “pursue his media career with CNN and to possibly pursue relationships with other law firms,” the suit says.

Clifford Robert, Callan’s lawyer, told The Post, “The suit is utterly and completely false, and merely a sad attempt to obtain money by defaming one of the most highly respected attorneys in New York.”