Morrison Cohen Receives AmLaw Litigation Daily “Litigator of the Week Shout-Out” for Carnegie House Victory

Morrison Cohen’s appellate team was recognized in AmLaw Litigation Daily’s “Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout-Outs” for their successful representation of Carnegie House Tenants Corporation in a challenge to an arbitration award that would have increased the cooperative’s annual ground rent from $4.36 million to $24.6 million.

Litigation Daily gave a shout-out to the Morrison Cohen and co-counsel Haynes and Boone appellate teams for their work securing a ruling from the Appellate Division, First Department vacating the arbitration award in full. The Court found that the cooperative had established an appearance of bias and an inferred conflict of interest involving the arbitration panel’s neutral umpire. The decision addressed the umpire’s communications with the landlord’s counsel concerning a paid offer to serve as an umpire in another matter, which was not disclosed to the tenant’s counsel.

Morrison Cohen’s team was led by Partner Gayle Pollack, who argued the appeal, along with Hon. David B. Saxe (Ret.), Jeremy Weinstein and Esti Ness. The Litigation Daily’s recognition highlighted the significance of the ruling in a case involving a 324-unit cooperative at 100 West 57th Street in Manhattan and a ground-lease increase of more than $20 million.

The decision also received broader coverage in the New York Law Journal and Law360.

Pollack told Law360 that the First Department’s decision has broader implications for arbitration in New York, calling it “a really strong affirmation of the core principles of New York law surrounding arbitrations.” She noted that while vacating an award based on arbitrator partiality is unusual, the facts presented an important opportunity for the Court to reaffirm the importance of process.

Saxe spoke with New York Law Journal about the rarity and significance of the ruling. He noted that arbitration awards are generally afforded a high degree of finality, making them difficult to overturn. “It’s not something you see every day and that’s what makes the reversal here, based on the impropriety of the umpire, so important.”

“Given the stakes of this particular matter, the fact that the shareholders’ homes are at stake, it was a particularly satisfying victory,” Pollack said.

Subscribers may read the New York Law Journal article here and the Law360 article here.