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The Highline park at night. The Highline park at night.

Saving the Highline

The Firm helped save the High Line after New York City Mayor Giuliani signed a contract to destroy the railway, claiming it was dangerous and blighted. The Firm represented Friends of the Highline, the New York City Council, and a group of developers, architects, government officials, and Chelsea and Greenwich Village residents in their effort to turn this unused elevated rail line on the lower West Side of Manhattan into a public promenade.

Our representation of Friends of the High Line required aggressive litigation in state trial and appellate courts and careful coordination with political and public relations strategies to receive the desired result. The High Line now attracts an estimated 8 million visitors each year.

Civil rights litigation

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United States Supreme Court.

Board of Estimate of The City of New York v. Morris

Founding partner, Richard Emery, won a landmark victory in the Supreme Court of the United States that changed the structure of New York City’s government.
Jail cell.

Tyson v. City of New York

In what was, at the time, the largest civil rights settlement in New York history, the Firm obtained $50 million for a class of 62,000 people challenging the constitutionality of pre-arraignment strip-searches.
Pan Am Flight 103.

Hagerman v. Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya

The firm recovered more than $40 million as part of historic $2.7 billion settlement with the government of Libya for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. This litigation created the terrorist exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA).