The Firm And Its Practice
Our practice focuses on the representation of businesses and high net worth individuals in all aspects of sophisticated civil and criminal business-related litigation, arbitration and other forms of dispute resolution. We also represent those clients in negotiating and structuring commercial transactions.
Our Litigation Practice
Clients often seek us out for matters pending in the courts and other tribunals in New York. Our clients include public and private companies in a variety of fields, including telecommunications companies, manufacturers, Internet service and content providers, publishers, oil companies, banks, hedge and private equity funds, broker-dealers and other investment and financial service entities, auction houses, real estate companies, charitable, educational and religious organizations, law firms, business partnerships and high net worth individuals.
The Firm is mostly veteran lawyers, each with outstanding professional and academic credentials. We have litigated extensively in trial and appellate courts in New York for over 30 years and have substantial experience in jury and non-jury trials. This experience gives us first-hand knowledge of those New York's courts and the judges, which is critical to representing clients successfully.
When the Firm represents a client in a business dispute, the matter is typically staffed with only one or two experienced lawyers, each readily accessible to the client. The Firm also handles complex, multi-party actions involving complex document collections and productions; we staff these actions with the number of attorneys and paralegals required for a successful engagement. Our lawyers' hands-on experience with complex litigation and personal involvement in every aspect of a matter provide both the skills and the continuity necessary for a successful and economical representation of the client's interests.
The Firm strives to find economical solutions to our clients' problems to maximize favorable outcomes. Litigation is usually a client's last alternative. Once it begins, we handle the litigation thoroughly and efficiently to its conclusion. We carefully manage and handle our clients' matters, from the initial pleadings through discovery, settlement negotiations and trial, in a manner that is cost effective and reflects our clients' goals.
Complex Commercial Litigation
We all have extensive experience in complex commercial litigation, including contract disputes and business torts. We represent large business enterprises such as Verizon, General Electric, Alcatel-Lucent, Reuters, AXA Investment Managers, Air Canada, Iovate Health Sciences and Idearc Media (the former Verizon Directories Corporation), public and private companies of all sizes in a variety of fields, charitable, educational and religious organizations, business partnerships, and high net worth individuals.
Corporate Governance
Our practice includes the representation of business entities, officers, directors, shareholders, members of limited liability companies and partners on a wide variety of business governance matters. Recent engagements have included representing a member of an LLC which invests in and rehabilitates mortgages in a dispute with the majority member of the LLC over the control and disposition of more than $500 million in assets, representing a national debt collection company and its directors in a suit against the company's founders, representing a ground transportation company in a dispute with a former director over the loss of his board position, suits among shareholders in closely-held corporations, and the representation of law firms and individual law firm partners in connection with the break-up of a firm and the departure of one or more partners representing a hedge fund in a dispute with its former Managing Member and obtaining a dismissal on the pleadings of a breach of contract action brought by that former Managing Member, alleging that he had been improperly expelled, based on documentary evidence that caused the court to find, as a matter of law, that the former Managing Member had materially breached the LLC's operating agreement. Our practice also includes the representation of non-profit, educational and religious organizations.
Antitrust
We represent clients in both civil and criminal antitrust matters, principally on the defense side. We are defending, or have defended, clients in such diverse industries as telecommunications, airlines, fur manufacturing, publishing, meat-packing and electrical contracting.
Securities
We represent both plaintiffs and defendants in securities litigation, including defendants in securities class actions. We frequently serve as separate counsel for officers, directors and individual witnesses in securities cases or securities investigations by various governmental agencies. Our clients have included individual shareholders, brokers and investment advisors, securities analysts and brokerage houses as well as a range of business entities, including large public companies, broker-dealers, hedge funds and private equity funds. Our practice includes appearances in state and federal courts, before FINRA (formerly NASD Dispute Resolution and the NYSE) arbitral tribunals and before the SEC.
Real Estate
We represent owners, real estate investors, and co-operative boards, brokers, and similar bodies in real estate disputes. We regularly represent a real estate investment company in connection with litigation or other disputes arising from the development of shopping centers, malls and residential multi-dwelling rentals throughout the United States. Other recent cases have included representing a real estate investor in a dispute with a co-investor over the control or disposition of over $80 million in investments, representing the minority owner of an LLC in a dispute with the majority owner regarding over $20 million in funds, representing successful bidders at foreclosure auctions seeking to compel the closing of the sales for which they contracted and representing a co-operative in a dispute with a commercial tenant, and representing a real estate brokerage firm in a dispute with one of its former brokers over the payment of brokerage commissions and obtaining an appellate court victory that, pursuant to New York's "faithless servant doctrine," precluded the former broker from receiving any commissions she had earned while she was still working there and after she failed to disclose to the brokerage firm that her husband (a former broker at the same firm) had formed a competing brokerage firm nearby.
In 2010, a Schlam Stone team secured the dismissal of criminal contempt charges brought in the Bronx Housing Court by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development against two individuals whose company had managed a residential real estate portfolio. These parties were charged with failing to comply with a court-ordered stipulation negotiated by the City and the attorney for the entity that owned the portfolio without the clients' knowledge or consent. The case was dismissed by the Judge as a matter of law at the close of the City's case-in-chief after the Judge accepted Schlam Stone's arguments that the City had failed to make out its prima facie case.
Telecommunications
We are regular outside counsel for Verizon Communications. We have represented Verizon and other telecommunications companies in a wide variety of proceedings in state and federal courts, in arbitrations and before governmental regulatory agencies. Our representations have included defending and prosecuting actions involving competitive local exchange carriers in connection with claims arising under interconnection agreements and other contracts, the Communications Act, and state amd federal antitrust laws; prosecuting a Lanham Act false advertising case on behalf of Verizon's yellow pages directory business against a competing directory; representing Verizon in an antitrust action in the Southern District of New York regarding its public pay telephones in New York City; and serving as primary corporate and litigation counsel to the U.S.'s largest distributor of downloadable content to cellular phone users.
We also have represented Verizon Wireless in a number of actions, including in a series of arbitrations against competing telecommunications carriers.
Intellectual Property
We represent clients in a variety of intellectual property matters, including trade secret, copyright, trademark and patent licensing disputes, as well as Son-of-Sam law compliance. Our lawyers also have patent infringement litigation experience. Our copyright and trademark clients have included Canusa, a Canadian publisher of bodybuilding magazines; the North American Foreign Trading Corporation, an international product development and distribution company; Internet gossip blogger Perez Hilton; Pilgrims' Pride, a food processing company; and Dollar Phone, a distributor of prepaid calling cards.
Our representations have included an inventor in a dispute relating to the production of biofuels and the theft of related trade secrets; Alcatel-Lucent in an arbitration concerning the licensing of telecommunications technology patents; a principal of a licensor in a lawsuit regarding the sharing of royalties paid under a license for pharmaceutical formulation patents and technology; and a U.S. technology development organization in litigation over a license to a patent relating to a highly successful chemotherapy drug. In other recent cases, we obtained an injunction preventing a foreign manufacturer from manufacturing and distributing a knock-off product which it had made using trade secrets stolen from our client, a U.S. manufacturer of consumer products; and we won a substantial award in an arbitration before the American Arbitration Association on behalf of a US consumer electronics wholesaler against a Chinese manufacturing conglomerate which had misappropriated tooling, dies and goods from our client and infringed a trademark to which our client had an exclusive license.
Internet
One of the nation's largest Internet service providers is a regular client of the Firm. We have represented it and other Internet companies in private civil suits and regulatory actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission on matters as diverse as spamming, alleged trademark infringement, the alleged breach of a co-marketing and text message aggregation agreement, alleged deceptive Internet billing practices and customer disputes, and cyberterrorism. We represented Revolution Health Care, an Internet healthcare company that was launched by AOL founder Steve Case. The Firm also represents a group of civil rights plaintiffs in their effort to prevent housing brokers from posting discriminatory advertisements on Craigslist. We represented a hedge fund in an expedited arbitration proceeding brought pursuant to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and successfully reclaimed the hedge fund's Internet domain name from its former Managing Member.
Employment
We counsel and represent both employers and high-level executives with respect to federal, state and local employment laws and regulations and employment agreements. We have appeared before the EEOC and in employment arbitrations before FINRA. The Firm has particular expertise regarding trade secrets and non-competition agreements. In representing a national celebrity, we obtained both a preliminary injunction in New York State court restraining a former employee from writing a tell-all book in violation of a confidentiality agreement, and a ruling at the outset of the case that it be litigated under an "Anonymous" caption box with the entire record sealed (an apparently unique result in a non-domestic relations case). We also recently represented a Hollywood talent agent in a dispute over a non-compete provision against her former employer, one of the top modeling and talent agencies in the United States. We also recently represented a boutique book publisher in a high-profile disability discrimination case.
RICO
Our expertise in civil litigation extends to the defense and prosecution of civil RICO actions. We recently prosecuted a RICO action on behalf of Verizon, and defended RICO actions on behalf of clients as diverse as the state oil company of a major oil producing country, an arts-related educational institution and a food wholesaler.
Bankruptcy
We represent a variety of creditors and debtors in bankruptcy litigation and related adverse proceedings, and have often been appointed by the Bankruptcy Court as special litigation counsel for debtors. We have represented several international importers and distributors, a lender, a toy designer and manufacturer and a light heavyweight boxing champion in litigation in bankruptcy courts and in district courts and courts of appeal in New York and around the country.
Tax
We represent individuals and businesses in civil and criminal tax controversies and administrative proceedings pending in courts and before state and federal tax agencies throughout the United States. Clients include individuals who invested in tax shelters or who face other income tax issues. We regularly represent individuals and companies in IRS or state tax investigations relating to income taxes as well as withholding, sales and other business taxes.
Sports and Entertainment
We act as regular outside counsel for a prominent sports promotion and management company, and have also represented several athletes and entertainment industry figures. In that regard, we have had substantial experience in litigation involving sports figures and issues unique to sport transactions. In 2003, we obtained a $28 million verdict in the Southern District of New York on behalf of boxing champion Graziano Rocchigiani against the WBC, one of the largest verdicts ever awarded in this kind of action. We also represent Dada Entertainment, a joint venture between Sony-BMG and Dada USA relating to the distribution of downloadable content to mobile phones.
White-Collar Criminal Defense
The Firm was founded by senior federal prosecutors and started primarily as a white-collar criminal defense firm. Our white-collar defense lawyers include Harvey Stone, the former Chief of the Appeals Division in the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, Ronald Russo, the former Chief of the Office of Official Corruption/Special Prosecution of the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York and former First Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation and James Sherwood, who concentrates on criminal tax, securities and accounting matters. We represent clients in state and federal investigations, trials and appeals. White-collar clients include major corporations and their top executives. We have developed particular skill not only in litigating criminal cases, but also in resolving them successfully and discreetly, often at the very early stages of the investigation.
We have had extensive experience in major criminal cases and investigations involving a wide range of subjects, such as securities fraud, derivatives trading, antitrust and price-fixing, mail and wire fraud, RICO, tax fraud, customer fraud, Medicaid and Medicare fraud, and other business violations. In many of those matters, our principal function was to negotiate with and educate the prosecutors or regulatory officials so that charges were not filed against our clients. When appropriate, we have tried criminal cases to verdict. We have obtained acquittals after jury trials in state and federal courts, and have also had dramatic successes on appeal in criminal cases. Where our clients have pled guilty following an investigation, we have, in the large majority of instances, been able to obtain a plea to reduced charges and a non-custodial sentence.
Our notable victories include obtaining the reversal on appeal of a state court conviction of a doctor accused of molesting a patient (the subject of an article in the Wall Street Journal), entering a case after conviction and obtaining a new trial for a defendant accused of trafficking in counterfeit securities and securing the acquittal of a rabbi accused of extortion at a state court jury trial.
In 2010, a Schlam Stone team secured the dismissal of criminal contempt charges brought by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development against two individuals who were charged with failing to comply with a court-ordered stipulation negotiated by the City with a corporate entity. The stipulation was signed without the individual clients' knowledge or consent. The case was dismissed as a matter of law at the close of the City's case-in-chief after the Judge accepted Schlam Stone's arguments that the City had failed to make out its prima facie case.
Appeals
We have a full civil and criminal appellate practice. Harvey Stone, one of our founders, is the former Chief of the Appeals Division, United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. Michael Marcus, who is Of Counsel to the Firm, is a 33 year veteran of the staff of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, including six years as the Court's Chief Attorney, responsible for managing the Law Department of the Appellate Division and its professional staff of thirty-five Court Attorneys and five Supervisors.
We routinely brief and argue appeals in the Federal courts of appeal and New York State appellate courts on behalf of parties and amici. Our recent appellate victories include: persuading the Second Circuit to dismiss a complaint against the state oil company of a major oil producing nation on sovereign immunity grounds; obtaining a rare reversal against the Federal Trade Commission in the Second Circuit on behalf of an Internet company in a landmark appeal that increased the FTC's burden when seeking restitution in deceptive marketing cases; in the first New York appellate court decision of its kind, securing the right of three limited liability company officers to advances of attorneys' fees by their former employer in connection with litigation between those officers and their former employer; reversing a state trial court order and securing a landlord's right to sue a former tenant for rent arrears; reversing a state trial court order and reinstating our client's $7 million ownership interest in a commercial building; restoring a divorcing mother's right to see her children without supervision; obtaining an affirmance of a state trial court order distributing approximately $2 million of funds to the former Managers of several limited liability companies after obtaining a rare vacatur of an interim appellate stay that initially blocked the distribution of these funds to our clients; obtaining an affirmance of a state trial court order dismissing multi-million dollar fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims on the ground that the corporate plaintiffs lacked standing to bring these claims and persuading the state appeals court to adopt the "sole actor" rule created by federal bankruptcy courts to permit the imputation of knowledge from corporate fiduciaries to the corporation even where those fiduciaries were allegedly acting adversely to the interest of their corporations; winning a Second Circuit reversal of a district court ruling that ERISA prohibited a spouse's election to forego survivor benefits payments in a divorce agreement; successfully convincing a state appeals court to reverse a lower court's order denying our client's summary judgment motion and to order the dismissal of a $750,000 conversion claim that had been brought against our client by one of its former employees; and in the first New York appellate court decision of its kind, vindicating the indemnification rights granted to the former Managers of several LLCs by those LLCs' operating agreements by reversing a lower court's order that conditioned those indemnification rights on the favorable outcome of a related litigation that had been brought against the former Managers by the LLCs' members.
Domestic and International Arbitrations
Our experience in arbitrating domestic and international disputes is equal to our broad and hands-on experience in the courts. In any given year, we have several national and international arbitrations pending, involving hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of domestic and foreign companies. We are well-versed in AAA, ICC, CPR and FINRA (formerly NASD Dispute Resolution and the NYSE) procedures and proceedings. We are currently representing a Wall Street whistle blower in a high profile FINRA arbitration and as a cooperating witness in investigations launched by the SEC, FINRA Enforcement and the New York State Attorney General.
Representing Officers, Directors and Individual Witnesses
We frequently represent individual witnesses, including corporate officers and directors when potential conflicts prevent the corporation's counsel from representing them. We have vast experience acting in cooperation with, or as co-counsel to, other firms, and because of our experience, efficiency and lean staffing, we provide high-quality representation that is, at the same time, affordable to the client.
Our Corporate Practice
We have highly credentialed corporate attorneys with broad experience in the banking, transportation, broadcast, satellite, cable and Internet industries who foxus on structuring investment vehicles to purchase and operate transportation companies, financial institutions and other businesses, with a focus on the corporate, financial, insurance, franchising, and regulatory aspects of the ground transportation industry.
Furthermore, all of our attorneys provide clients with corporate counseling and transactional advice from time to time, including drafting contracts ranging from employment agreements to contracts for business alliances and serving as de facto in house counsel to closely-held entities to assist them in minimizing their litigation risks in the ongoing operation of their businesses.
Services and Billing
Because we typically hire only lawyers with substantial experience, every Schlam Stone & Dolan lawyer in our litigation practice is well equipped to handle the responsibility of litigation on his or her own, with great efficiency. Thus, we typically staff matters with one or two lawyers, each of whom is readily accessible to the client. As necessary, we assign teams of more than two lawyers to handle particularly complex matters.
Our charges are based primarily on the amount of time devoted to a representation. In appropriate cases, we will work on a special fee arrangement to meet a client's particular needs. For example, in suitable cases we will represent a client for a flat fee, a flat fee for particular phases of work on a matter or for fixed fees per month for long-term continuing representations.