Joe DiMaggio has started more fights in death than he ever did in his life. Morris Engelberg, the Yankee Clipper's longtime lawyer and trustee of his estate, was sued Thursday in Florida's Broward County for breach of contract and defamation of character by a former law partner.

Rick Leone, a South Florida attorney, alleges Engelberg badmouthed him to clients after Leone bought part of Engelberg's accounting and law practice three years ago. The suit accuses Engelberg of stealing Leone's clients and damaging Leone's ability to make a living.

Leone claims in part that Engelberg encouraged clients to desert him by telling them Leone breached attorney-client privilege involving business matters of the DiMaggio estate. Leone denied breaching attorney-client confidentiality.

Engelberg, meanwhile, denied he stole clients, but repeated his charges that Leone violated attorney ethics. "I couldn't tell these clients to use someone who violated privileged communications," said Engelberg, who called his former partner "pathetic."

Though not part of the lawsuit, Leone also said Engelberg may have cost DiMaggio's heirs as much as $2 million in avoidable estate taxes. Leone says he suggested using a loophole in probate law that could have kept DiMaggio's grandchildren, Paula and Kathy, paying a "generation-skipping tax" and keep more of their inheritance. But Leone says Engelberg refused to do it.

"One reason an attorney who is also a trustee might choose to pay the generation-skipping tax would be so the attorney would not lose his trustees' fees," Leone said. "The attorney would be willing to sacrifice the interests of the beneficiaries for his own personal gain."

Engelberg denies that. "The IRS came in, and I got a clean bill of health," he says. "If there was a problem, the grandkids would sue me."

The Hollywood, Fla., attorney explained that DiMaggio expressly instructed him not to give the grandchildren their inheritance directly, which could have saved the generation-skipping tax. Engelberg said Joe D. wanted to ensure his money went to his great-grandchildren and ordered the money put into a trust, on which Engelberg collects fees.

"He loved his great grandkids more than his grandkids," Engelberg said of DiMaggio. "If the granddaughters died, they could leave (DiMaggio's money) to their husbands."

The lawsuit is the latest dustup in a series of battles involving Engelberg during a tumultuous four years since DiMaggio was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually killed him.

A few weeks after DiMaggio was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 1998, Engelberg got into a shouting match with DiMaggio's brother Dom in the Florida hospital that bears the Clipper's name. Dom was angry he hadn't been informed of his brother's real condition. The attorney admitted to lying to the media about the disease. "Joe didn't want people to know he had cancer," Engelberg said.

After DiMaggio's death in April of 1999, Engelberg sued the city of San Francisco when it offered to name a park after his client, saying the park was too puny.

Richard Ben Cramer's bestselling 2001 biography of DiMaggio, "The Hero's Life," portrays Engelberg as hoarding DiMaggio memorabilia. One scene in the book depicts Engelberg pulling DiMaggio's beloved 1936 World Series ring off the slugger's finger on his deathbed.

Engelberg says his upcoming book, "DiMaggio: Setting the Record Straight," due out this month, will give "the real story, straight from the horse's mouth."

"This lawsuit isn't a story," Engelberg said, "but the book is major. It's got a forward by Henry Kissinger."

It's sure to differ sharply from the Pulitzer-prize winning Cramer's account. According to Engelberg's book, for example, the lawyer was trying to put the '36 ring back on DiMaggio's finger in his final moments of life.

"Erroneous reports claimed that I was struggling to get Joe's ring off his finger as he was dying," Engelberg writes. "In truth, it wasn't on his finger that night until I put it there."

Luke Cyphers is a senior editor at ESPN The Magazine.