Litigation

What We Do

We represent Fortune 500 and closely held corporations, as well as entrepreneurs, corporate officers and directors, and investors in a broad range of disputes, including breach of contract, partnership, antitrust and trade regulation, accounting, banking, labor and employment, and bankruptcy.

Unlike some firms that solely offer a generalist litigation function, our Litigation Group is made up of dedicated industry teams, enabling us to combine cutting-edge solutions to our client's thorniest challenges. Our client service model proposes lean and dedicated teams of litigators in the investment management, real estate and hospitality, music, financial institutions, FinTech, art, entertainment, fashion, technology, and film arenas, and we often scale up to add area specialists, providing a deep bench of litigators for our largest and most complex cases while remaining efficient and streamlined in our offerings.

Class Actions, Regulatory, and White Collar Investigations

We litigate securities class actions and shareholder derivative actions and represent clients in regulatory investigations and enforcement proceedings. Our litigators have won victories for our clients in some of the most notable investment management cases, including the Madoff, Bayou, and Petters frauds, and have successfully extricated our clients from investigations conducted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Department of Justice and various state Attorney General investigations. In fact, when our clients have become caught up in government investigations as targets or witnesses, our team includes former federal and state prosecutors as well as partners with long experience in dealing with governmental inquiries, all of whom understand the enforcement perspective and have the ability to successfully guide our clients through the process.

Intellectual Property and Media + Entertainment Litigation

Historically, Pryor Cashman has been at the forefront of litigating intellectual property cases, including copyright, trademark, trade dress, trade secrets, unfair competition, theft of ideas, right of privacy and publicity, and patent cases, often securing precedent-setting decisions. As one of the nation’s premier firms in media and entertainment-related litigation, our litigators have long been on the front lines, asserting and defending trademark and copyright infringement claims for various stakeholders in the music, art, literature, film + television, cannabis, and fashion industries, to name just a few.

As the media world changes from an ownership business model to providing content on demand through mobile devices, our clients have faced extraordinary business and legal issues, and we have worked closely with them to address these issues. Our litigators have helped define and continue to shape the law in this space. We have litigated cutting-edge cases establishing new copyright laws regarding music sharing and streaming services, and we will continue to innovate legal territory as new devices, media, platforms, and channels emerge.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (Arbitration + Mediation)

Our guiding principle is that litigation is not a first resort but the last resort. But avoiding litigation is not always possible. Because we work closely with our clients and have established longstanding relationships with them, we have an in-depth understanding of their businesses. As we know what risks are worth accepting and what risks can only be accepted where there is no alternative, we can provide our clients with as many alternative strategies as possible, including, but by no means limited to, litigation or arbitration.

When litigation or arbitration cannot be avoided, the litigators in our Alternative Dispute Resolution group, many of whom have served as arbitrators and mediators, have achieved positive results for clients in arbitrations and mediations before the American Arbitration Association (AAA), JAMS, FINRA and other alternative dispute resolution bodies. We bring significant expertise in arbitration and mediation in the context of Media + Entertainment, Trusts + Estates, and Family Law as well.