Now Comes the Lawsuit

Two months after risking death by saving the life of an epileptic passenger who fell into the path of an incoming no. 1 train, subway hero Wesley Autrey Sr. is accusing one of his attorneys and a Hollywood agent who promised him movie and book deals of tricking him, making him "act fast" in signing a far-reaching contract giving the duo half the profits from his fame.

"Because he was getting himself and his daughters ready to go to the White House and he did not want to keep the president waiting, he felt that he didn't have time to read" the contract, Mr. Autrey's lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, claims.

Mr. Autrey now wants a state judge to nullify the contract, which his suit calls "one-sided," and stop the lawyer, Diane Kleiman, the movie agent, Mark Anthony Esposito, and the agent's production company, SiUNO Theatrical Productions, from exploiting his heroic story.

Ms. Kleiman, a former Queens prosecutor, customs agent, and occasional Fox News Channel commentator who met Mr. Autrey's family at a Waldorf-Astoria banquet last month, said she proposed representing the subway hero because she wanted to make sure no one took advantage of him.

She called the allegations made in Mr. Autrey's lawsuit "nonsense" and "preposterous," adding that she gave the subway hero almost a week to review what she called a typical contract to engage her services.

"His defense is, ‘I'm a poor black guy with very little education, and these educated white people tried to take advantage of me by forcing me to sign a contract that I did not read.' We didn't force him to sign," Ms. Kleiman said. "This is a two-page contract. Big letters, no little letters, not in legalese."

Ms. Kleiman told The New York Sun that she and her partner already have prepared a "treatment," Hollywood parlance for a summary, of a novel based on Mr. Autrey's life, and that they are entitled to be paid for their work. She declined to elaborate on her creative work. Mr. Autrey's lawsuit says the three-year contract entitles Ms. Kleiman and Mr. Esposito to 50% of the profits related to his fame, regardless of whether they result from their work.

Mr. Autrey, a mason tender and Navy veteran, made national headlines when he jumped from the subway platform and threw his body on top of Cameron Hollopeter, a 19-year-old film student having a seizure on the tracks of a Broadway local train at 137th Street.

In addition to plaudits at the White House and a standing ovation at the State of the Union address, Mr. Autrey received the Bronze Medallion, the city's highest civilian honor, from Mayor Bloomberg; Donald Trump wrote him a $10,000 check, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gave him unlimited MetroCard rides for a year.

It was during the press frenzy, according to Mr. Autrey's 23-page lawsuit, that Ms. Kleiman wooed the hero by urging him to sign the contract "because the public would lose interest in plaintiff very quickly, especially because the Sean Bell grand jury would be making a decision soon."

The relationship between Mr. Autrey and his new agents started deteriorating shortly after it began, both sides say, and has now devolved into a he-said, they-said.

When Mr. Autrey agreed to allow a New York magazine reporter to follow him around for a biographical profile, for example, Ms. Kleiman and Mr. Esposito told their client to withhold information to preserve enough material for the book and movie deals they had dreamed up, both parties say.

Another time, Ms. Kleiman sought to charge a Long Island elementary school for a motivational speech by Mr. Autrey, the lawsuit alleges. Ms. Kleiman said she solicited the fee only at the behest of Mr. Autrey's sister, Linda.

A voicemail box belonging to Mr. Esposito's company was not accepting messages yesterday.

Throughout the disputes, Ms. Kleiman said, she was looking out to guard Mr. Autrey's interests, as she put it, "to give his 15 minutes legs, so it wouldn't just last 15 minutes."

"I don't want this to sounds racist in any way," she said. "He's a 50-year-old black man who did a very heroic thing. But this was five minutes out of a 50-year-old man's life."

Mr. Autrey's new attorney, Barbara Mehlsack, declined to comment. Ms. Mehlsack, who has represented Mr. Autrey's labor union, will need to convince a judge to invalidate another provision of Mr. Autrey's contract, which forces the dispute into binding arbitration.