Miami litigator Andrew Hall, who took on eclectic cases like battling Sudan for damages in the USS Cole bombing and defending Nixon White House aide John Ehrlichman, died Monday on his 75th birthday.

The managing partner of the eight-attorney Hall, Lamb, Hall & Leto was born Andrzej Horowitz in a Warsaw, Poland, basement in 1944 when his Jewish father was posing with forged papers as a gentile and his mother and 9-year-old brother hid in an office closet. They escaped through sewers to Krakow and then to Germany in 1946, were separated and reunited, and took the Hall name in an Ellis Island-style change. His challenging early years would frame his legal career.

Interviewed in 2016 when his law firm won the Daily Business Review's Small Litigation Department of the Year award, Hall said he was attracted to underdogs in David-and-Goliath cases. "I see an abuse of power or somebody is not living up to their word, that's the case I want to get into," he said.

Miami litigator Aaron Podhurst of Podhurst Orseck noted his longtime friend took many cases on a contingency basis knowing they could last for many years and have no guaranteed payday. He said Hall's "collection of many millions after a judgment which few thought he would ever collect on was a tribute to his tenacity and brilliance."

Law partners Adam Lamb, son Adam Hall and Matthew Leto issued a statement saying, "There is no replacing Andy's tenacity, wisdom and larger-than-life personality."

Hall sued the governments of Sudan, Iraq and Cuba and worked hard to collect damages. He defended Home State Savings Bank owner Marvin Warner during the savings and loan crisis and won multimillion-dollar verdicts for Security Pacific Bank, Union Bank and Burger King Corp. He also sued insurance companies, developers and Ponzi schemers.

Hall died five months after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his attempt to collect a $315 million default judgment from Sudan for supporting al-Qaida terrorists who bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. The decision hinged on legal notice and whether it should go to an embassy or a foreign minister. Hall served the embassy.

Nelson Jones, a Houston solo practitioner who served as Hall's co-counsel in terror cases, said in 2011, "You read about people who find their calling, who can make a living doing exactly what they love, that is absolutely true about Andy Hall." Hall hated "injustice and when folks do not have a voice in the corridors of power."

Beyond the courtroom, Hall pushed Congress for new laws to allow U.S. terror victims to sue and collect damages. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act was amended to allow lawsuits against countries labeled as state sponsors of terrorism, and the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act allowed victims to collect judgments through the seizure of assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department.

At 29, Hall was the youngest attorney on Ehrlichman's criminal defense team for burglaries at the Watergate office building in Washington and the California office of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ehrlichman served an 18-month sentence.

Hall served as chair of the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach, on the national board of the American Jewish Committee and the board of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.

He died of symptoms of chronic colitis at home with his family. He is survived by his wife, Gail Sloane Meyers; children Adam Hall, Michael Hall, Hilary Azrael and Kathryn A. Meyers; six grandchildren; and brother Allan Hall.

Services are set at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Temple Judea at 5500 Granada Blvd. in Coral Gables. Burial will follow at Lakeside Memorial Park at 10301 NW 25th St. in Doral.