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Commercial Litigation

Leader & Berkon has extensive experience in handling a range of commercial disputes for our clients including major corporations and manufacturers like Dupont, Tyco, Sun Chemical and Phelps Dodge and major financial firms including Morgan Stanley and Citifinancial. Our litigators are adept at managing cases that include fraud claims, as well as complex contract disputes in many substantive areas.  Some of our recent experiences and successes include:

·         We recently mediated and successfully resolved a highly complex accounting fraud and breach of contract litigation arising out of the sale of a billion dollar coal subsidiary.  Plaintiff, represented by one of New York’s largest law firms, claimed substantial understatements of employee benefits liabilities in the financial statements, and sought $200 million in damages.  Depositions were taken over two years in multiple states and countries.  Actuarial and accounting experts were part of the legal teams.  On the eve of trial, we pressed for a mediation, which the Court ordered before one of the premier lawyers and mediators in New York City.  The mediation, which lasted five days, consisted of computer assisted evidentiary presentations and oral arguments.  Intense negotiations generated an outcome which was favorable and fair.  It was an excellent model for how successful alternative dispute resolution should operate.

·         The new management of Tyco International has tapped Leader & Berkon to handle significant commercial litigation in the New York Metropolitan Area, including protection of trade secrets and employee raids by other companies, and contract and fraudulent inducement suits over divestitures of businesses, one of which involves significant environmental issues with both the US EPA and the New Jersey DEP.  We are also counseling the company in connection with a variety of international matters in order to avoid litigation.

·         On two occasions, within 24 hours of being retained by the largest jet fuel supplier, we obtained emergency restraining orders and orders of attachment against foreign airlines and prevented their planes from leaving New York until they capitulated and paid large outstanding balances.

·         We are representing Sun Chemical in a federal lawsuit where Sun claims nearly one million dollars for commercial ink it sold defendants under a supply agreement.  Against an array of defenses, from non-performance to fraud, the Court recently awarded Sun summary judgment on defendants’ liability plus interest and attorneys’ fees.  An inquest on amount of damages and attorneys’ fees was held over a one week period where witnesses testified and documents were admitted into evidence.  We obtained judgment for the full amount sought by Sun Chemical.  The judgment was paid.

·         We recently represented a client in a dispute with one of its insurers in a major litigation; the insurer is now in liquidation.  The insurer in liquidation noticed an arbitration against our client for nearly $2 million allegedly owed by our client in retrospection premiums.  We quickly negotiated a very favorable settlement in which the insurer agreed to set off, on a dollar for dollar basis, the $2 million in retrospective premiums against what the insurer theoretically owed our client on the insurer’s unpaid share of the settlement of the major litigation.  This eliminated our client’s potential liability and expenses in what would have been a costly arbitration in exchange for reducing a proof of claim for the unpaid share of the litigation settlement that, in all events, would only be worth a fraction of its face value after the liquidation process.

·         On behalf of a national flooring contractor, we recently obtained summary judgment in federal court in New York dismissing lost profits and destruction of business damage claims in excess of $20 million sought against our client by a former national retail chain.  The Court found such claims to be too speculative and not within the reasonable contemplation of the parties.  Subsequent to this decision, the Court granted our application to preclude our adversary’s damage expert, further reducing our client’s exposure.

·         We represented Whirlpool and succeeded in forcing State Farm essentially to capitulate in its attempt to aggregate in one upstate New York court thousands of property-damage subrogation claims from all over the country.