Representative Cases
■ Won a $1.6 million judgment after trial for a minority owner of a closely-held corporation against its controlling shareholders. Rotstein's client had purchased a one-sixth interest in a start-up restaurant for $50,000. Although the business flourished from the outset, defendants failed to pay plaintiff his share of profits, denied that the corporation was profitable at all, and withheld all information about the firm's finances. When Rotstein brought suit, defendants first refused to respond to discovery requests, and then produced only limited and fraudulent financial statements, while denying that they had any computerized records that showed sales of the business. After Rotstein issued a deposition subpoena for the company's outside information-technology consultant, they abruptly changed their story, confessing that their in-house "point-of-sale" computer program did, in fact, automatically record all receipts. Then, in an effort to bury plaintiff in a blizzard of disorganized paper, they belatedly produced thousands of tattered shards of such records. Rotstein retained a statistics expert to select a manageable random sample of those documents, which revealed that the restaurant made some 55% of its sales in cash. That finding, together with a meticulous analysis of the corporation's bank statements and the costs and expenses disclosed by its tax returns, allowed plaintiff to reconstruct the corporation's finances, which revealed massive, previously undisclosed profits.
■ Represented a small industrial equipment supplier in a breach of lease action against a multinational corporation represented by a 250-attorney law firm. After protracted discovery and motion practice, Rotstein filed a summary judgment motion. Defendant quickly settled on terms highly favorable to Rotstein's client.
■ Achieved a six-figure settlement for a client who was injured when she fell in a puddle from a water cooler in the pantry of the office of the global real estate management and investment firm where she worked. Water spills and leaks from the device were a recurring problem but had prompted no protective or cautionary steps by her employer. Rotstein brought claims for negligence against the employer and its custodial service, and claims for product liability (for defective design and failure to warn) against the water cooler's manufacturer and the distributor that leased it to the employer. All four defendants were represented by counsel retained by their major insurers. Rotstein documented not only that many of the manufacturer's competitors included protective features in their similar products or suitable warnings about their hazards, but that the defendant itself had done so in some of its other models. He also submitted an expert report from a scholar in the field of Human Factors and Ergonomics showing the avoidable risks involved in the product. Rotstein offered novel and compelling arguments that the employer's defense of exclusive remedy under the New York Workers' Compensation Law would fail. The settlement followed three years of repeated and egregious discovery delays and abuses by defendants that were curbed only on plaintiff's several motions to compel.
■ Represented a fine-arts advisor who acted as an expert consultant and witness at trial concerning misappropriation of a famous work of modern art. Although both the artwork's erstwhile owner and her law firm acknowledged the superb quality of his work, an unfavorable result at trial resulted in bitter recriminations between the owner and her attorneys, and both sought to place the burden of paying Rotstein's client on the other. Rotstein brought suit against both the artwork's defrauded owner and her former law firm, one of New York's largest and most prestigious. Following discovery, both defendants settled on terms extremely favorable to Rotstein's client.
■ Condominium owners suffered injuries when a new retail store’s heating, ventilating and air conditioning system, which was treated with hazardous anti-corrosive chemicals, was vented directly underneath their apartment’s terrace and windows, releasing toxic fumes into plaintiffs' premises and sending them to the hospital with acute respiratory symptoms. Rotstein brought suit against the store’s owner, a large national chain, which was defended by two major New York law firms. After Rotstein filed for a preliminary injunction, the store shut down the harmful system and relocated it, at considerable expense, to the building’s roof.
■ Labor union members seeking to influence the policies of their local were subjected to a pattern of harassment by its incumbent leadership, which also refused their request to to have all members apprised of their rights under the federal Landrum-Griffin Act, as Section 105 of the statute itself requires. Rotstein won a precedent-setting decision from a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, reversing the district court, holding that unions are required to inform their members of their essential democratic rights under Landrum-Griffin.
■ A longtime union activist was suspended as shop steward and then expelled from his union without the due-process safeguards guaranteed by the federal Landrum-Griffin Act and the union's own constitution. Hours after Rotstein brought suit for damages and served defendants with preliminary injunction papers, the union reinstated his client, who was subsequently elected local union president.
■ Represented an executive dismissed by a major national marketing company in the course of a reduction-in-force and after she was publicly rebuked by management for “excessive use” of her health insurance benefits due to grave medical conditions. As a result, commission payments due to her were funneled instead to younger and/or male sales representatives. After serving the company’s law firm with a draft complaint alleging breach of contract, age discrimination, sex discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and other causes of action, the company offered the client a favorable severance package.
■ A client firm was sued by customers for selling a defective product. Rotstein brought into the lawsuit a third party that had actually manufactured and furnished the product, and documented that the product as sold was not defective and that the damage in question had actually been caused by the customers’ own acts. Plaintiffs dropped their lawsuit without payment or other conditions.
■ A child was injured while using a recreational playground facility in the manner intended by the manufacturer. After documenting the cause of the accident and magnitude of the injury, the manufacturer settled plaintiff’s claims before suit was filed.
■ A client company purchased assets from another firm which fraudulently concealed the existence of a condition in its own prior purchase-and-sale agreement for the same assets that prohibited any future assignment without the express permission of its own seller (which had not been sought). Further, the initial seller defrauded its own purchaser, breached its non-competition and non-solicitation covenants, committed trade defamation, misappropriated trade secrets, and incited former
employees of Rotstein’s client to file bad-faith employment discrimination complaints. Two lawsuits, one arbitration, two unsuccessful discrimination charges, and nearly three years later, Rotstein helped to bring about a global settlement on terms favorable to his client.
■ Prevailed in the Appellate Division, Second Department, against appeal of a favorable decision ordering transfer of a lawsuit between different courts. Rotstein's adversary, who represented himself in the unsuccessful appeal, is a partner in a major Wall Street law firm who had won all ten of the prior appeals he had handled in the course of his career.
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LAW OFFICE OF ANDREW ROTSTEIN
Representing businesses and individuals in
commercial and general civil legal matters
620 FIFTH AVENUE, 2ND FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10020
TEL (646) 412-3210 ▪ CELL (718) 909-1338 ▪ [email protected]
