Civil Litigation A substantial part of our practice involves litigation of fraud-related civil matters. Our practice often involves cases in which there are parallel criminal and civil proceedings, including securities fraud and antitrust cases. Moreover, given the proliferation of lawsuits in which private litigants have sued legitimate businesses under the civil treble damage provisions of the RICO statute, our experience in the field of white collar crime makes our firm well-suited to represent clients in civil RICO cases. Thus, our civil cases regularly involve claims of securities fraud, RICO violations, other fraud claims, and forfeiture. We have represented both plaintiffs and defendants in civil fraud and RICO cases. We have defended a number of clients against civil and criminal charges involving securities fraud. We have represented principals, officers, executives, brokers, traders, and employees of securities firms in civil proceedings brought by the SEC, as well as in related federal and state criminal proceedings. We have represented clients before self-regulating organizations, including the NewYork Stock Exchange. We have represented many lawyers both in criminal and civil cases. We have also represented lawyers in disciplinary proceedings. We have represented clients in the mutual fund investigations in their dealings with law enforcement, regulatory and self-regulatory entities.  We have represented a client in litigation stemming from the Enron probes. We have litigated the scope of primary liability under Central Bank and the scienter requirement for imposition of primary liability in a market manipulation case. See S.E.C. v. U.S. Environmental, Inc., 927 F. Supp. 168 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), rev'd, 155 F.3d 107 (2d Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 119 S.Ct. 1755 (1999).  We are currently litigating issues relating to the scienter requirement under the recent PSLRA amendment authorizing the SEC to bring aiding and abetting claims.  We have represented other clients with respect to claimed securities violations, including the principals of a venture engaged in securities trading on behalf of an offshore company, who were charged by the SEC in a civil proceeding with engaging in millions of dollars of unlawful day trading and by federal prosecutors with evading taxes on millions of dollars of profits arising from the trading. One of our partners has served as a court-appointed Independent Supervisor to monitor corruption within a labor union.  (See our Internal Investigations practice.)  As Independent Supervisor, on behalf of the union, he brought two civil RICO actions against two employers in order to recover damages caused by the employers' participation in unlawful labor payoffs to former union officers.  In both cases, our law firm did the legal work and recovered multi-million dollar awards for the union. We have also litigated a number of other civil RICO cases. We successfully defended a former executive of a major reinsurance broker, who was named as a defendant in a civil RICO action brought by two offshore insurance companies seeking millions of dollars of damages allegedly arising from a complicated fraud involving numerous companies in the international reinsurance industry. We also won a multi-million dollar judgment in a RICO suit against multinational companies and their principal for engaging in a pattern of fraudulent activity in connection with an investment in an Argentine company. We have litigated a number of other civil cases in the federal, state and Surrogate's courts. We handled a lengthy, complex fraud case on behalf of the Administrators d.b.n. of the estate of a prominent art dealer who had represented Andy Warhol, Magritte, Man Ray, Matta and other well known artists. Through litigation in Surrogate’s Court, we were successful in removing the administratrix who had looted the estate, and, through litigation here and in foreign countries, we were also able to retrieve major works of art for the estate. We have represented prominent artists, whom we have helped recover misappropriated artwork, and we helped a not-for-profit theater company overturn a lower court decision barring it from proceeding with a hip-hop version of Shakespeare. We also represent clients in matters involving forfeiture of property by law enforcement agencies.  We have litigated cases involving both the federal and state forfeiture statutes.  In ongoing litigation with the New York State Attorney General's Office concerning the state civil forfeiture statute, we have obtained a significant decision in which the Court ruled that the state officials did not adhere to the statutory requirements and their conduct was without authority and ultra vires under state law.  Local 851 v. Thyssen Haniel Logistics, Inc., 90 F.Supp.2d 237, 243-47 (E.D.N.Y. 2000).