Our firm represents individuals involved in struggles for corporate control, rights to retirement benefits, and faced with situations involving betrayals by fellow officers, directors and partners. Recent cases often involve immediate fights to preserve the rights of our clients faced with struggles for corporate control, including the necessity of preserving their rights as shareholders and as board members. In these situations we have gone to court and we have obtained injunctions to preserve our clients rights, including the rights to participate in an entrepreneurial technology company (1991) and the rights to participate in a co-venture in electric transport with an international (Czech Republic) co-venturer (1998). Other cases which typify this area of our practice have involved the preservation of rights to stock options and retirement packages for the former chairman of the board of a NYSE listed financial institution (1994) and for the former general counsel of a broad based health insurer (1995). Most recently we defended at trial individuals falsely charged with diverting the assets of their corporation so as to defeat the claims of a creditor (1998, and, following an appeal, reaffirmed by the trial court (2000)). Current cases (August 2004) include representing an entrepreneurial finder in claims against major institutional health care enterprises for misappropriating and using his transactional ideas and opportunities to make hundreds of millions of dollars in acquisitions without compensating him. Recent trials (June 2004) include a derivative action on behalf of a corporation whose assets were converted by a major creditor and a significant shareholder, who set up and financed a competing enterprise with these assets. The jury found the defendants liable for civil conspiracy to accomplish a breach of fiduciary duty and returned its verdict, to the penny, in the full amount requested of them in closing argument.

Related Practice Areas

Our firm's focus on business torts includes less controversial disputes, including those with insurance carriers. For example, in Maryland, during the year 2003, we represented a widow against a nationally based insurance company. We resolved through federal court mediation her claim that her insurance carrier wrongfully denied her accidental death benefits due her by reason of the death of her husband, while he was a hospitalized in-patient. The policy contained typical language by which the insurer disclaimed any liability for accidental death benefits if any underlying illness or disease played a role in the death of the insured. During the year 2003, in cross-motions for summary judgment, in federal court in Maryland, we prevailed in an ERISA action against a disability insurance carrier that decided to withhold the full measure of monthly benefits due the insured and instead offered to pay the insured the minimum amount due under her policy. We demonstrated to the court that any ambiguities in the insurance policy regarding the measurement of the insured's period of earnings should be resolved against the insurer.