Attorneys

Edward M. Spiro is a civil litigator with many years of experience in handling complex commercial litigation at the trial and appellate level in state and federal courts, and in arbitrations, for individual and corporate clients.  He has represented clients in diverse matters, including:

•    an insured in successfully trying to verdict a directors and officers insurance coverage dispute, upheld on appeal before the Second Circuit;

•    a Fortune 50 company, as plaintiff, in a series of civil antitrust cases arising from a bid-rigging scheme;

•    a major outdoor advertising company in constitutional, contract, and other matters;

•    the rock group, Guns N’ Roses, in a copyright and unfair competition action; and

•    clients in various tax, real estate, partnership and employment litigation.

Mr. Spiro has extensive experience defending civil litigation related to concurrent governmental investigations or prosecutions, including class actions and other complex cases involving the securities and antitrust laws.  Mr. Spiro has represented corporate officers in litigation relating to the Sumitomo copper scandal and Global Crossing, Ltd., and currently represents individuals in options backdating and Madoff-related civil litigation.  He is representing a major financial institution in the multi-district Municipal Derivatives Antitrust Litigation.

Mr. Spiro also advises attorneys on matters of legal ethics.  He has served as an expert in the areas of professional responsibility and standards of care.

Mr. Spiro received a J.D. cum laude from Boston University School of Law, where he was a member of the Law Review.  In private practice since 1976, he joined Morvillo Abramowitz as a principal in 1994.

Mr. Spiro is co-author of Civil Practice in the Southern District of New York, 2d Ed. (Thomson West 2009), a frequently cited two-volume treatise updated annually, and co-author of a regular New York Law Journal column on civil practice in the Southern District of New York.  He has lectured on professional ethics for the Practicing Law Institute and for the past several years chaired a New York City Bar Association CLE program entitled “Ethics, Discipline and Real World Obligations.”

Mr. Spiro is a former Chair of the Committee on Professional Discipline of the New York City Bar Association and currently serves as a representative of the City Bar in the House of Delegates of the New York State Bar Association.  He is a member of the New York County Lawyers’ Association and former chair of its Committee on Professional Discipline.  He is also a member of the American Bar Association (Litigation and Criminal Justice Sections), the New York State Bar Association (Commercial and Federal Litigation Section), and the Federal Bar Council.  Mr. Spiro was listed in the 2007 and 2008 editions of New York Super Lawyers—Metro Edition.

He is admitted in New York and to practice before the United States Tax Court, the Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fifth, and Eleventh Circuits, and the District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, Northern, and Western Districts of New York.