Illinois attorney Mark Kipnis is nothing like the media magnate Conrad Black, who is sitting 10 feet away from him in the Chicago federal courtroom where they are on trial over fraud charges, an attorney for Kipnis said in his opening statement to the court.
Schiff Hardin attorney Ronald Safer, formerly chief of the U.S. attorney’s criminal division in Chicago, painted a picture of Kipnis as a family man who has one home in suburban Northbrook, Ill., unlike the jet-setting Black who had homes in Toronto, New York, London and Palm Beach, Fla. He said that Kipnis was an “outsider” among the four former Hollinger executives on trial and that he probably only had five conversations with Black.
