Trial Experience

Twenty years in wide-ranging general practice including complex civil litigation (e.g ., first case to recover Superfund response costs from the federal government; first suit transferred from United States District Court to Saudi Arabia); corporate and business law (including tax, bankruptcy, vehicle and equipment leasing, environmental law, employment, government contracts, and venture capital issues); intellectual property including patent licensing for "artificial blood"; nuclear energy cases for Columbia University and Allied-Signal; work supporting the Innocence Projects; representing commercial clients on legislative and regulatory matters at the federal, state and local levels, including drafting legislation and report language, preparing witnesses to testify, and testifying before legislative committees; representing clients ranging from former Attorney General Edward H. Levi, the RAND Corporation, and the American Automotive Leasing Association (see, e.g ., Graham v. Dunkley, 852 NYS2d 169 (NYAD 2 Dept. 2008)), to Saudi Arabian princes, high tech companies, school teachers, imprisoned felons (Cottone v. Reno, 193 F.3d 550 (D.C. Cir. 1999)), tenants, consumers, and homeowners; and supporting the House of Representatives rule giving Eleanor Holmes Norton and other delegates the right to vote in the Committee of the Whole (Michel v. Anderson, 14 F.3d 623 (D.C.Cir. 1994).

Other litigation experience, in government service, includes handling cases involving the military's drug control program in Europe (Committee for GI Rights v. Callaway, 518 F.2d 466 (D.C.Cir. 1975)), admiralty ship collision cases, the first "wrongful life" case in federal court, civil rights voting cases, mandatory retirement rules (O'Donnell v. Shaffer, 491 F.2d 59 (D.C.Cir. 1974)), antitrust law, the civil law presumption of death (Blew v. Richardson, 484 F.2d 887 (7th Cir. 1973)), Taft-Hartley Act injunction cases, Establishment Clause challenges to the creche scene in the Christmas Pageant of Peace on the park opposite the White House (Allen v. Morton, 495 F.2d 65 (D.C.Cir. 1973)), official immunity suits, the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Federal Claims (Testan v. United States, 424 U.S. 392 (1976)), torts, contracts, and FOIA cases.