Attorneys

Directors & Boards Corporate Governance for Thought Leaders January 2012 E-Briefing features Morvillo Abramowitz Partners Jonathan S. Sack, Catherine M. Foti and Robert J. Anello commenting on the attorney-client privilege as one of the critical issues facing directors today, including how it applies to corporations, internal investigation 'work product' with respect to privilege, considerations when privileged materials are inadvertently disclosed to third parties, and applications of privilege outside the United States. To view the entire Q&A click here.

On Friday, October 28, 2011, Morvillo Abramowitz Partner Catherine Foti will be participating in a Harvard Law School program, Legal Practice Areas: Litigation Practice (Securities and White Collar).  To be held in Pound Hall, Ms. Foti, along with partners from WilmerHale and Wilson Sonsini, will discuss the types of matters white collar litigators work on, how they decided to focus on this type of work and what a typical day in their practice is like.

After almost nine years of hard fought litigation, on October 28, 2010, the firm obtained a tremendous result fully vindicating its client Kenneth Lipper.  When a hedge fund managed by Mr. Lipper was dissolved in 2002 after it was revealed that the fund’s portfolio manager engaged in a mismarking fraud, Mr. Lipper was named in nearly 20 lawsuits and was accused of committing fraud, acting negligently, and breaching fiduciary duties.  After a 19 day arbitration hearing that concluded in January 2010, a FINRA arbitration panel totally rejected claims brought against Mr. Lipper by the fund’s liquidating trustee and concluded that Mr. Lipper acted appropriately in managing the fund.  In addition, the same FINRA arbitration panel awarded firm clients Mr. Lipper, Lipper & Company, L.P., and Lipper & Company, Inc. more than $15 million in damages, finding that the Trustee was contractually obligated to indemnify them for entirety of the legal fees and expenses they incurred in connection with their successful defense of the 20 actions and investigations arising after the fund’s dissolution in 2002.  On October 28, 2010, the Honorable Shirley Werner Kornreich of the Commercial Division of the New York Supreme Court, New York County issued a 21 page decision confirming the FINRA arbitration award.  The Panel’s decision and Justice Kornreich’s Order represents yet another affirmation of the firm’s long held position that Mr. Lipper acted properly and appropriately in managing Convertibles, that he was a victim of the portfolio manager’s underlying fraud, and that all of the lawsuits brought against him lacked any merit whatsoever.  The Morvillo Abramowitz attorneys representing the Lipper Parties at the FINRA arbitration and the New York state court proceedings included Elkan Abramowitz, Catherine M. Foti, Jeremy H. Temkin, Benjamin S. Fischer, David Austin, David J. Stankiewicz, and Scott Schirick.

On July 14, 2008, Morvillo Abramowitz Principals Robert J. Anello and Catherine M. Foti received the New York City Bar Association’s 2008 Thurgood Marshall Award for Capital Representation. The award is presented annually in recognition of exemplary service to the cause of justice in the United States, and was awarded to Mr. Anello and Ms. Foti for their pro bono representation of an individual on death row. Morvillo Abramowitz also was recognized for supporting its attorneys in their pro bono work.

Morvillo Abramowitz Principals Barbara Moses, Jodi Peikin, Catherine Foti and Judy Mogul appeared in “New York’s Women Leaders in the Law” in New York Magazine.

The section is featured online on New York Magazine’s web site at nymag.com/womenleaders, on the New York Law Journal’s web site at www.nylj.com/womenleaders