After several rounds of litigation between Hayes and the Foundation, an Appellate Court ruled he had been overpaid, violated his fiduciary duties to the Estate and owed them over a million dollars.
[citation needed] In the 2000s, Hayes collaborated with Bruce Cutler, best known as John Gotti's former attorney, in defending a pair of New York police officers accused of organized crime related murders.
[citation needed] At this time, Hayes also represented Daniel Libeskind, the master plan architect for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan.
In addition to dedicating his 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities to Hayes, Wolfe has acknowledged that he based the lawyer character Tommy Killian on him.
Andy Warhol had met the lawyer briefly in the fall of 1980 and wrote in his diary: Defense lawyer named Ed Hayes who looked like he was from Laverne and Shirley, like a plant that people invite to parties to wear funny clothes and jump around and make things ‘kooky.’ Sort of forties clothes, really crew cut, about twenty-nine.
He said, ‘I can get ya outta anything.’In the 1990 American film classic Goodfellas, Hayes played Robert De Niro's attorney.
Hayes's representation of famed tabloid columnist Mike McAlary was depicted in the 2013 Broadway hit, Lucky Guy, starring Tom Hanks.
As of 2014, Hayes is a weekly correspondent on the John Batchelor Show,[6] where he covers topics such as crime, NYC politics, and more.
Hayes has struggled with psychological trauma from his abusive childhood and chronic depression for most of his life, and in his memoir, covers his efforts to treat it with therapy and eventually medication.
[1] However, Hayes has been motivated by his childhood trauma to help people, such as representing twenty 9/11 police widows who were having problems collecting relief money.