In the Courts
Holwell Shuster & Goldberg’s intimate understanding of the way judges approach the issues before them gives our clients an invaluable advantage in court. Our attorneys have participated in legal disputes from every angle—as advocates, as mediators, and, critically, as judges and judicial clerks.
Before founding the firm, Judge Holwell served as a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Justice McGuire served as an associate justice in the First Judicial Department of the Appellate Division and, before that, as a justice in the 11th Judicial District for the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
HSG attorneys, including a vast majority of our associates, have served prestigious clerkships across the country and internationally. Three of our partners, Gregory Dubinsky, Vincent Levy, and Daniel Sullivan, clerked for United States Supreme Court justices, and one of our attorneys clerked for the New York Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court. Beyond that, HSG attorneys have served clerkships on numerous federal courts of appeals and district courts throughout the United States.
That extensive experience informs the choices we make as advocates. We also bring to bear our experience as lead trial counsel for clients such as Visa and HSBC in a range of high-stakes commercial litigation, antitrust, intellectual property, international arbitration, and appellate matters. Recent HSG courtroom victories have included:
- A $2.4 billion trial verdict against Lehman Brothers related to mortgage-backed securities;
- The approval of a historic $6.26 billion settlement with one putative class of merchants—the largest known settlement of a private antitrust case in the 120-year history of the Sherman Act;
- A successful $286 million appeal in New York’s First Department in an insurance coverage dispute arising out of the SEC’s late-trading and market-timing investigation of Bear Stearns in the mid-2000s;
- A summary judgment victory for one of the world’s most preeminent law firms and two of its partners in their defense of high-profile malpractice claims and related litigation;
- A successful Second Circuit argument in a high-profile appeal brought by holdout bondholders to challenge the decision of the Southern District of New York lifting the pari passu injunction it had entered against the Republic of Argentina in the wake of its default; and
- A successful New York Court of Appeals decision unanimously reversing a conviction and dismissing an indictment for “enterprise corruption,” known as New York’s “mini-RICO” statute, in a closely watched case.