Kasowitz LLP

Practice Areas

Kasowitz LLP practices law in the following areas and works with its clients to provide the best possible legal solutions.

• Affirmative Litigation And Recovery
• Antitrust Litigation
• Banking And Capital Markets Litigation
• Commercial Litigation
• Complex Financial Products Litigation
• Corporate
• Creditors' Rights And Bankruptcy
• Employment Practices And Litigation
• Entertainment Law
• Environmental Litigation
• Government Affairs
• Insurance Recovery
• Intellectual Property Litigation
• International Disputes And Cross Border Litigation
• Investigations And White Collar Defense
• Mass Tort Toxic Tort And Product Liability Litigation
• Matrimonial And Family Law
• Real Estate And Hotel Litigation
• Real Estate - Transactional
• Securities Litigation
• Software Litigation

Hiring Criteria

Kasowitz LLP follows the set of hiring criteria outlined below.

Applicants should have strong academic achievement, outstanding judgment and personal skills like effective communication, leadership qualities, interpersonal abilities, teamwork, and diversity sensitivity.

Pro bono

Kasowitz is dedicated to serving the needy who cannot afford to pay for legal services. Recognizing the importance of providing pro bono services to needy individuals and organizations, it treats its pro bono clients on par with its other clients. The firm encourages its attorneys to take up pro bono matters in any area in which they are interested.

Attorneys of the firm serve on the board of legal services organizations and are involved in advising community, religious, charitable and other no-profit entities as part of the firm's pro bono mission. When making advancement and compensation decisions, legal experience gained from pro bono work and hours spent on such involvement are treated on par with experience and hours on usual client matters.

The firm has received many an award for its pro bono work in the last several years, including pro bono publico awards from the Legal Aid Society. In addition, an attorney received the John Geiger Award for work on behalf of inMotion's disadvantaged clients in family court matters. This award was also received for mentoring attorneys and summer associates in these matters. The firm received the Safe Haven Award from Immigration Equality for its work representing LGBT applicants for asylum in the U.S.

The firm handles matters referred by various legal services organizations and courts, including The Legal Aid Society, inMotion, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Human Rights First, Immigration Equality, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the Veteran Advocacy Project (affiliated with the Urban Justice Center), Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), the SDNY Pro Se Office, the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Association, the Northern District of California Pro Bono Project, the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office and the SF Volunteer Lawyers Services Program.

Kasowitz attorneys have handled pro bono cases involving a wide array of issues, including child custody and support, divorce, political asylum, immigration, landlord-tenant, government benefits, employment discrimination, foreclosure defense, veterans' rights, special education, civil rights and representation of not-for-profit organizations.

The firm Represented refugees from Tibet, Bhutan, Sudan (Darfur), Brazil, Guinea and other countries in applying for political asylum and handling related immigration issues, including family reunification. Kasowitz attorneys have worked on a number of successful reunification cases involving Darfuri families caught in an immigration loophole that had prevented their young children from being eligible to enter the U.S.

Kasowitz represented refugees from Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Brazil and other countries who were persecuted on account of their sexual orientation in applying for asylum in the United States.

The firm represented victims of domestic abuse and other disadvantaged mothers in obtaining custody orders, divorces and additional child support, in conjunction with inMotion.

Notable cases

• Kasowitz secured a decisive jury verdict in favor of its client, a pump manufacturer, facing thousands of asbestos-related bodily injury lawsuits and against several excess insurance companies. 2012
• The firm defeated a motion for Rule 23 class certification on behalf of a New York-based Dunkin' Donuts franchisee in an action brought by former employees in the Southern District of New York claiming wage law violations under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law. The primary claims alleged were failure to pay proper wages and gratuities (i.e., tip-pooling violations) to thousands of non-exempt employees and unlawful pay docking of managers and assistant managers at 25 store locations.
• In August 2012, Kasowitz's Intellectual Property group won appeals in two separate cases before the Federal Circuit. On August 14, 2012 the Federal Circuit upheld Kasowitz's win for Hitachi in MagSil and M.I.T. v. Hitachi, finding M.I.T's patent to be invalid for lack of enablement. In the underlying litigation, MagSil and M.I.T alleged that Hitachi infringed M.I.T's patent and sought more than $100 million in damages. But just weeks before trial, after all other major players in the disk drive industry had settled, Hitachi won summary judgment that the asserted patent is invalid. This victory was featured as one of Corporate Counsel's Top 10 IP Litigation Wins of 2011.
• Just a week later, Kasowitz notched a second Federal Circuit win in Jang v. Boston Scientific, in which Dr. G. David Jang seeks to recover $100 million from Boston Scientific for its use of his patented stent designs. After replacing original counsel following an adverse judgment in the district court, the Kasowitz team represented Dr. Jang in his appeal of that decision to the Federal Circuit. On August 22, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court and revived Dr. Jang's claims.
• In an important decision affecting criminal prosecutions of corporations, among others, the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Southern Union, on June 21, 2012, granted the appeal of Kasowitz client, Southern Union Company, holding that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution require that a jury, not a judge, find beyond a reasonable doubt any fact that increases a criminal fine beyond a prescribed statutory maximum. Here, a Rhode Island federal judge had imposed a fine of $18 million on Southern Union following its conviction by a jury on one of three counts of violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, even though the violation carried a maximum fine of only $50,000 per day of violation, and the Government never requested, and the jury never made, a finding of the length of the alleged violation.
• On March 1, 2012, United States District Judge Jose L. Linares of the District of New Jersey granted summary judgment dismissal of an age discrimination lawsuit brought by a 74-year old former executive against Kasowitz client ADP Statewide Insurance Agencies Inc. ("ADP"), a subsidiary of National Financial Partners, a leading benefits, insurance and wealth management firm.
• On October 20, 2011, a civil jury in Orange County Superior Court in California returned a verdict in favor of the firm's clients, the Franciscan Friars of California and Fr. Alexander Manville. The case involved claims by two brothers that they had been sexually molested by Fr. Manville and another Franciscan Friar nearly 20 years ago. Such cases are rarely tried and are even more rarely won by the defense. But here the jury, which consisted of seven women and five men, found that the alleged abuse never happened and that the accusations were fabricated. The trial took five weeks.
• On September 1, 2010, Kasowitz, on behalf of its client Dr. W. Scott Harkonen, former CEO of InterMune, Inc., won summary dismissal of all claims with prejudice brought by a class of consumer plaintiffs against Dr. Harkonen for allegedly misbranding InterMune's drug Actimmune and making false claims about Actimmune's effectiveness for patients suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
• Kasowitz recently obtained the summary dismissal of two disputes brought against its client, Women Model Management ("Women"), a leading fashion modeling agency. On October 2, 2009, New York State Supreme Court Justice Marylin G. Diamond awarded summary judgment to Kasowitz's client in a lawsuit filed by one of Women's competitor agencies (1 Model Management, LLC v. Kavoussi). The action had alleged that a model manager employed by Women unlawfully solicited models, misappropriated alleged confidential information and trade secrets and engaged in unfair competition. Dismissing the action in its entirety, Justice Diamond also denied the competitor agency's cross-motion for partial summary judgment and motion for leave to amend to add Women as a defendant and expand the litigation to include the alleged solicitation of two additional fashion models. This victory follows Kasowitz's dismissal of a separate lawsuit brought by an alleged former shareholder of Women (Shahrik v. Men Women Model Management, Inc. et al.). On June 17, 2009, New York State Supreme Court Justice Barbara R. Kapnick granted Women's motion to dismiss the complaint, holding that the plaintiff failed to state causes of action for fraud, breach of fiduciary duty or trademark infringement as a matter of law.
• A federal jury in the Eastern District of Texas on February 9, 2012, rendered a verdict in favor of defendants, including Google and YouTube, finding invalid two notorious patents alleged by Plaintiffs to have broad application across the interactive web and to cover all embedded browser applications and plug-ins on the internet. Plaintiffs Eolas Technologies and the Regents of the University of California claimed that a host of web sites violated their patents and sought over $600 million in damages in a scheduled multi-phase trial, more than half of that sum from Google and Yahoo! alone. Several companies that were named as defendants settled with Eolas prior to trial. Kasowitz was brought in by Google and YouTube in late 2011 to serve as lead trial counsel.

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