Practice Areas
Real Estate
Our real estate practice embraces the spectrum of real estate transactions including acquisition, leasing, disposition, development, construction, financing, joint ventures, and land use planning. We represent owners, developers, managing agents, condominium and cooperative boards, corporations and financial institutions.
We provide services in virtually all aspects of commercial, office, shopping center, retail, industrial and single and multi-family residential, real estate matters. Our work includes fee and leasehold mortgage financing transactions in connection with acquisitions, refinancing and construction.
We have extensive experience in commercial lease transactions, including negotiating and preparing sophisticated ground leases and build-to-suit leases and other shopping center, retail, industrial and commercial leases.
We also have extensive experience in the documentation required of and by institutional lenders in connection with commercial and residential real estate mortgage financing, including industrial revenue bond financing, construction lending, securitized loans, loan participation arrangements, and the preparation and closing of such loans. We have represented lenders in sophisticated participation loans and in connection with mortgage workouts for troubled real estate projects involving the restructuring of existing loans or mortgage foreclosures.
We provide counsel in landlord/tenant matters, condominium and cooperative matters, including general business advice, negotiation and preparation of construction and related contracts, negotiation and preparation of contract claims and dispute resolution, arbitration, financing, mechanic's liens, lien law trust fund obligations and construction litigation.
Corporate
With regard to our corporate practice, we are experienced in providing counseling and supervision of legal matters for a variety of corporations and other entities, including partnerships and limited liability companies. We render advice in connection with business organization and structure, including agreements among equity owners, shareholders, partners, members and various transactions involving reorganizations and liquidations. We have extensive expertise in negotiated stock and/or asset based mergers, acquisitions and dispositions, and represent both buyers and sellers of various types of small and medium sized companies, including the negotiation and closing of secured financing in connection with such transactions. Our services also include the purchase and sale of businesses, preparation of shareholder buy-sell and redemption agreements, limited partnership agreements, operating agreements for limited liability companies, and employment, compensation, consulting and non-competition agreements. We also have experience in representing not-for-profit and religious corporations, including handling refinancings, acquisitions and general corporate matters.
Litigation
We have extensive experience in the areas of real estate, corporate, commercial, construction and environmental litigation, and specialize in both the prosecution and defense of matters before federal and state courts, including the appellate level, governmental agencies and arbitration tribunals. We also provide our clients with day-to-day counseling and supervision of compliance with federal and state regulations.
Representative real estate litigation matters include representation of title insurance companies in title insurance claims, including boundary and easement disputes, forgery, and priority of lien claims. We have prosecuted and defended real estate brokerage claims, fraudulent conveyance actions, disputes arising out of real estate contracts, construction contracts and leases. We have substantial expertise in landlord and tenant litigation, lien law litigation, mortgage foreclosure proceedings, and lender liability litigation.
Representative corporate and commercial litigation matters include antitrust, unfair competition, trademark and copyright infringement, Lanham Act false advertising claims, breach of contract, diversion of products, product liability litigation, commercial collection matters, lender liability claims, creditors' and debtors' rights, corporate dissolutions, partnership and closely held company shareholder disputes, and employment law matters, including wrongful discharge and discrimination proceedings.
We have represented clients before State and Federal environmental agencies and have litigated matters involving CERCLA, RCRA, Motor Fuel Franchise Act, New York's Navigation Law and the Petroleum Marketing Practices Act.
We also have broad experience in representing clients in defense of product liability and toxic tort liability.
Wills and Estates
We also represent individuals in sophisticated estate and tax planning matters, focusing on asset preservation and minimization of estate, gift and income taxes. This is achieved, in part, through Wills, all types of trust agreements, use of LLC’s and intra-family loans, where appropriate.
We also serve as legal counsel to Executors and to Trustees in all facets of the administration of simple and complex estates and trusts, including the preparation of estate and gift tax returns.
In addition, we are involved in estate and trust litigation, such as disputes concerning the validity of Wills, difficult probate proceedings and contested accountings and have extensive experience in representing individuals and charitable beneficiaries of estates and trusts.
Along with lectures on various trust and estate topics, including seminars sponsored by National Business Institute, one of our attorneys, Robert Clinard, has been published.