Partner James Gadsden, chair of Carter Ledyard’s Corporate Legal Opinions Committee, has accepted an invitation to join the TriBar Opinion Committee. The “TriBar”, which originally included designees of three New York groups – the Special Committee on Legal Opinions on Commercial Transactions of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, the Corporation Law Committee of the New York City Bar and the Special Committee on Legal Opinions of the New York State Bar Association – now includes members of the state bars of California, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas, and of the Allegheny County (Pittsburgh, Pa.) Boston, Chicago and District Columbia bars. TriBar has prepared a number of influential reports on third-party legal opinions including Third-Party “Closing” Opinions, 53 Bus. Law. 591 (1998), Special Report of the TriBar Opinion Committee: U.C.C. Security Interest Opinions – Revised Article 9, 58 Bus. Law. 1449 (2003) and Third Party Closing Opinions: Limited Liability Companies, 61 Bus. Law 679 (2006). The current projects of the TriBar include limited partnership opinions, opinions on clauses shifting risks and bring down opinions.
Mr. Gadsden has also been active in the Legal Opinions Committee of the American Bar Association’s Section of Business Law and in the Working Group on Legal Opinions Foundation. His article Closing Opinions for Common Law Trusts was recently published in the summer 2016 edition of In Our Opinion, the newsletter of the Legal Opinions Committee. He was the Chair and Reporter of the Subcommittee of the Committees on Structured Finance and Bankruptcy and Corporate Reorganization of the New York City Bar Association that published the Special Report on Substantive Consolidation Opinions, 64 Bus. Law 411 (2009).