When Neal Greenberg met Leonard Cohen over dinner in 1996, the Boulder banker gushed that it was a rare honor to dine with the iconoclastic writer and musician -- a celebrity since the late '60s for his cerebral, soul-baring songwriting. They ate and talked, and within several months Greenberg was responsible for investing and managing the bulk of Cohen's fortune.
Nearly ten years later, millions of dollars that Cohen had invested through Greenberg's Boulder-based firm, the Agile Group, are gone. But Greenberg would like everybody to know that, to quote a Cohen song, the deal is rotten, but it isn't his fault. So last month, he filed suit in Boulder District Court, claiming that Cohen and his attorney, Robert Kory, had conspired to falsely blame him for Cohen's financial woes and had threatened to use Cohen's celebrity to extort money from Greenberg.