Walter O'Malley
O'Malley was a well-connected depression-era bankruptcy lawyer. One of his friends, George V. McLaughlin, was President of the Brooklyn Trust Company and a member of Robert Moses' Triborough Bridge (and later Tunnel) Authority. Brooklyn Trust had many mortgages on properties whose value had evaporated during the depression. O'Malley went to McLaughlin offering legal assistance in trying to extract value from the worthless properties, through mortgage foreclosures, selling off collateral, and rewriting payment terms. One of the properties was the estate of Charles Ebbets, which included half the stock his family owned in the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1945, O'Malley and Branch Rickey together bought the Ebbets shares, and by 1950, O'Malley had full control of the team.
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