Having just won a Not Guilty verdict in a federal conspiracy and Hobbs Act robbery trial in the Southern District of New York, I want to say a few words about federal criminal practice. 

The federal sentencing guidelines are so stringent that the idea of actually g...

There are certain attitudes that are death to a case. I’m not talking about attorney errors made during trial – we all make mistakes, and a mistake by itself will rarely alter the trial dynamic so drastically that your chance of winning disappears. But bad attitudes ca...

The New York Times recently ran an article about the new trend for corporations to build into every contract for credit or goods an arbitration clause. Entitled “Arbitration Everywhere – Stacking the Deck of Justice,” the article points out how this trend is taking awa...

Last term the United States Supreme Court held that pretrial detainee excessive force claims against corrections officers are governed by an objective reasonableness standard. It resolved a dispute between the Circuits, choosing the more plaintiff-friendly “objective r...

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

-- John F. Kennedy

The best way to negotiate a settlement is to be prepared to go to trial and fight. However, if you’re afraid of going to trial, that fear will manifest in the negotiations and adv...

Eastern District Judge Jack Weinstein upheld a jury verdict of bias against a lesbian UPS worker this past week, in Roberts v. United Parcel Service, 13-CV-6161. The decision is instructive to trial lawyers because it displays each side’s creative and potentially poten...

 The trial of Pedro Hernandez was an attempt by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to answer the question, what happened to Etan Patz? Etan was never found after his mom watched him walk down the street to catch the school bus in 1979, the last time he was ever s...