Nationally recognized for outstanding client service, our team brings extensive experience, in-depth and diverse knowledge, and innovative, strategic thinking to our practice, which operates at the intersection of corporate law and complex litigation. Frequently providing counsel in headline-making matters, we offer top-tier representation much more efficiently than the BigLaw lawyers we face off against as we work to attain optimal outcomes for our clients; and, we’re proud of the success we’ve achieved in these encounters. While we’re New York lawyers who help people with New York problems in New York courts, we also maintain a strong network of both national and global relationships. This enables us to help clients across the country and around the world unravel problems and advance their interests.
We represent secured and unsecured creditors as well as debtors in bankruptcy cases and non-bankruptcy workouts. Banks, mortgagees, lessors of real and personal property, and other creditors turn to us for advice on enforcing their rights and recovering their assets because they know our lawyers have helped clients succeed in virtually every type of matter in this area. Clients appreciate our strong and strategic advocacy on their behalf in federal and state courts and around negotiation tables.
Our team has earned a stellar reputation for counseling clients who operate in the corporate trust business arena. We also advise indenture trustees and creditors’ committees, as well as institutional and individual creditors’ committee members. Among our many high-profile clients are The Bank of New York Mellon, Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation, Sandoz, Inc., and the Attorney General of the State of West Virginia.
Why Our Experience is the Right Fit
Cooperation Is Key to Our Culture
Clients often tell us that we suit their needs perfectly because of three primary attributes, among others. First, they benefit from the internal collaboration we bring to their matters, which serves as a cornerstone of our firm’s culture. Because of the firm-wide synergy and wide-open lines of communication we have cultivated over the years and continue to maintain, our team members often draw upon the resources of other lawyers in the firm, including those in the Litigation, Real Estate, Corporate, Tax, Environmental, and Maritime practice groups.
Additionally, our lawyers draw on the experience and knowledge we’ve gained by serving prominent roles in such highly regarded organizations as Committee on Trust Indentures and Indenture Trustees of the American Bar Association’s Section on Business Law, the American Bankruptcy Institute, and the Turnaround Management Association. We publish numerous well-received articles in the bankruptcy field and speak at a wide range of venues, including New York University, the American Bankers Association, Banking Law Institute, and the ABA’s Section on Business Law and the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors. All of this outreach helps us stay current on the issues in this complex legal area, which enhances our ability to help clients.
Those we serve also value the time we take to understand their short-term and long-term business goals and concerns as well as the trends within their industries. We do this through thorough but efficient research and by asking the right questions to elicit answers that help us help them; they like that we make it a priority to truly listen to them.
Our Innovative Approach
Seeing an Opening and Moving Quickly. Serving clients in a wide range of economic sectors, we craft creative strategies and apply cutting-edge business and legal models to help parties who seek to seize investment opportunities by swooping in to acquire assets that arise out of bankruptcy cases.
Combining Experience with Innovation. We draw on our unique skills and ways of looking at and handling matters for bond trustees. Our lawyers have advised clients for many years on matters in this complex area and built a deep and broad base of institutional knowledge while also staying on top of the ever-changing dynamics in this space.
Groundbreaking Decisions. Our team often achieves positive outcomes for clients in unprecedented cases that transform the law. For example, we won a landmark victory for the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Cybergenics Corporation in the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After an extremely rare hearing en banc, the Court of Appeals reversed its prior panel decision by holding that a bankruptcy court may authorize an unsecured creditors’ committee to prosecute avoidance claims where the debtor in possession fails to do so.
Proven Strengths
Our lawyers offer a variety of services that clients need in the overlapping and multi-layered landscape of corporate law and high-stakes litigation:
- We provide counsel in Chapter 11 cases and in other bankruptcy and workout-related matters, including state court receivership proceedings.
- Our lawyers advise clients on secured transactions and default and bankruptcy risks in commercial transactions.
- Clients turn to us for help in both defending and prosecuting litigation arising out of bankruptcy cases, loan defaults, and all types of secured transactions, in both bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy courts.
- We’re well-versed on the issues that surface in “claw back” preference and fraudulent transfer matters.
- Our team members represent companies seeking to purchase assets in sales under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code.
- We’ve gained prominent recognition for our ability to attach and foreclose upon collateral and conduct public and private sales of pledged assets
- Our lawyers represent foreign liquidators when the assets of a foreign bankruptcy are located in the United States, and we advise foreign creditors in U.S. reorganization and liquidation proceedings.
Experience
- We are representing indenture trustees in the recent chapter 11 cases for LATAM Airlines and Sears Holdings in the Southern District of New York, and the General Nutrition Centers and RAIT Funding cases in the District of Delaware. We are also representing an investor who sought to purchase the assets of uBiome, Inc., a manufacturer of home medical testing kits.
- We are acting as local bankruptcy counsel for the State of West Virginia in the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy and are representing or have recently represented corporate clients dealing with a variety of issues, including claims litigation and avoidance actions, in such Chapter 11 cases as Westinghouse, The Weinstein Companies, Sears Holdings, Republic Metals, Gordmans Stores, Central Grocers, and Rochester Drug Co-operative, and continue to represent creditors sued in preference actions brought in bankruptcy cases in New York, Omaha, Chicago, and Delaware.
- We represented parties who had open transactions with Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. and its affiliates in closing out and asserting claims arising out of those transactions.
- We are advising parties who invested directly or indirectly in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme on their rights and liabilities in connection with those investments.
- We won a landmark victory for the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Cybergenics Corporation in the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After an extremely rare hearing en banc, the Court of Appeals reversed its prior panel decision by holding that a bankruptcy court may authorize an unsecured creditors’ committee to prosecute avoidance claims where the debtor in possession fails to do so.