SCHLAM STONE & DOLAN - Key Persons
Angela Li focuses her practice primarily on white-collar criminal defense and complex civil litigation in both state and federal courts.
In her criminal practice, Angela has represented individuals in both state and federal investigations, mainly involving wire and mail fraud, obstruction of justice, various state crimes, and regulatory and compliance matters. She has worked with both individual and corporate clients on matters related to sexual harassment and discrimination under federal, state, and local laws, including gender-based and age-based claims.
In her civil practice, Angela has represented corporate clients in actions involving breach of contract claims, commercial lease disputes, and complex financial transactions. She has experience in all areas of pre-litigation, including overseeing discovery; resolving complex, large-scale, electronic discovery issues; working with experts and witnesses to prepare for their sworn testimony; and writing briefs or motions at all stages of litigation.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Board Member at the Bridges Academy Parents' Association
Annette is an active board member at the Bridges Academy Parents' Association, acting as the legal counsel for the Parents' Association.
Job Titles:
- Representing Real Estate Developer
Representing real estate developer Ben Ashkenazy and his company Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. in various render liability cases;
Bennette Deacy Kramer is an experienced litigator whose practice focuses on bankruptcy litigation, complex commercial disputes, and white-collar criminal investigations. She has represented numerous clients in federal district court, bankruptcy court, federal courts of appeal, and New York State courts in a wide variety of bankruptcy litigation matters, including appeals to the District Court and Court of Appeals, civil RICO, forfeiture, and restitution resulting from criminal convictions.
Bennette contributes to the Eastern District Roundup Column in the New York Law Journal. She is an active member of the Federal Bar Council of the Second Circuit, where she is a Chair and editor in chief of the Federal Bar Council Quarterly. She is also a board member and secretary of both the Eastern District Civil Litigation Fund and Nazareth Housing, Inc.
Before becoming associated with Schlam Stone in 1993, Bennette was associated with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Instructor at Yale
Brad represents clients under investigation for securities, mail, wire and bank fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations (FCPA), antitrust, tax evasion, healthcare fraud, political corruption and a wide array of other alleged federal and state offenses in jurisdictions throughout the United States
Brad serves as an instructor at Yale where he teaches an undergraduate course on white collar crime. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Yale's Silliman College.
Job Titles:
- Manager
- Information Technology & Facilities Manager
David Sikora serves as Manager of the information technology department and the firm's facilities manager. In this role, David administers Windows and Cloud server systems, manages renovations, and office infrastructure. David has deep expertise in server management, hardware/software research and development, project planning, and system purchasing.
Prior to joining the firm, David worked for Konica Minolta and All Covered, an international IT company where he worked on the project upgrade team in the legal vertical. David has serviced medium to large sized law firms throughout the New York City area, managing hardware upgrades and cloud migrations.
Education
Queens College, B.A., Media Studies, Cinematography and Film, Video Production, 2003
Job Titles:
- President and Founder of CDR Securities
Defended David Rubin, President and Founder of CDR Securities, in a bid rigging indictment brought against him in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by the U.S. Justice Department Antitrust Division.
Defended Frank Borghese, former Vice President for Worldwide Sales of Symbol Technology, in a six-week accounting fraud trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Obtained an acquittal for Mr. Borghese of all charges.
Doug Grover is a former federal and state prosecutor who investigated and tried numerous criminal matters ranging from complicated financial schemes to mafia-related crimes before obtaining many trial acquittals and no-prosecution deals as a defense lawyer. Doug currently practices white-collar criminal law and related litigation as well as civil litigation, where he has successfully tried many civil jury, bench, and arbitration cases. Doug has represented businesses and individuals, including politicians, corporate officers, attorneys, doctors, architects, financial advisers, accountants, securities analysts and traders, investment bankers, and government agents. Doug has defended clients facing allegations of campaign-finance violations; government corruption (including bribery and foreign corrupt practices); securities, environmental, tax, and antitrust crimes; fraud; and false statements to government officials and investigators.
Doug has represented companies and corporate executives in both civil and criminal investigations involving workplace deaths; bribery of government officials (in the U.S. and internationally); theft from federally funded entities, undocumented employees; theft of trade secrets and other corporate espionage; re-sale of misbranded pharmaceuticals over the Internet; unfair student loan practices; government contract fraud; and environmental violations involving asbestos remediation, the Clean Water Act, and illegal oil discharges on oceangoing vessels.
"I've handled every kind of problem that can happen in a courtroom, from the last minute discovery of an exculpatory recording to the disappearance of the defendant in the middle of the trial."
Doug also has extensive experience overseeing and conducting internal investigations.
Doug has been ranked on the highly coveted U.S. News & World Report "Best Lawyers in America®" list for the past 15 years. He has also been selected for the New York Metro Area list of Super Lawyers® for Criminal Defense: White-Collar, and holds an AV 5/5 rating from Martindale Hubbell. He has been a guest lecturer at Fordham Law School and the Kings County District Attorney's Office Trial Advocacy Program. He also serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Eastern District Civil Litigation Fund, a court-established, not-for-profit entity providing support to pro-se litigants.
Elizabeth Wolstein is an experienced advocate who focuses on high stakes government and business litigation. She defends clients in government civil enforcement matters; represents organizations and individuals in civil litigation involving federal and state agencies; and litigates complex commercial disputes on behalf of businesses and individuals.
Elizabeth has litigated complex disputes involving all manner of subject areas, including non-profit governance, academic freedom, trademark, breach of contract, fraud and other business torts, civil rights, the First and Fourth Amendments, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and federal and state freedom of information laws, to name a few. Her clients have included a family business sued by the Department of Justice for alleged False Claims Act violations; a national nonprofit in state-level attorney general investigations and subsequent litigation; the owner of a successful start-up defrauded by his business partner; a sovereign nation and its central bank in connection with a commercial dispute between a state agency and private fuel supplier; a Mexican sugar company and Brazilian seafood exporter in separate commercial disputes; parents in a grass roots challenge to New York's school mask mandates; and a professional fundraiser sued by a state attorney general for allegedly fraudulent charitable solicitations. Elizabeth emphasizes development and mastery of facts and evidence as integral to successful litigation strategy and works closely with clients to achieve their objectives.
Elizabeth served for nine years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil Division of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, including for several years as Deputy Chief Appellate Attorney. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney, Elizabeth handled some of the Civil Division's most significant cases, including defending the constitutionality of the federal statute banning partial birth abortion, representation of multiple federal agencies in the Enron bankruptcy, and defending Freedom of Information Act cases arising out of the war on terror. She argued numerous appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, two of which were televised on CSPAN. Elizabeth is a recipient of the Department of Justice's Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award.
Job Titles:
- Partner
- Member of the Firm 's Management Committee, Has Spent over 25 Years Litigating Complex Commercial Disputes in New York City. He Focuses on Three Main Areas
Erik Groothuis, a member of the Firm's management committee, has spent over 25 years litigating complex commercial disputes in New York City.
Erik also regularly represents clients in business divorce, breach of contract, corporate governance, defamation, insurance, investor and securities fraud, cryptocurrency disputes, and business-torts litigation, as well as related appeals. He often litigates at home in the Commercial Divisions of New York's state courts and the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, but has represented clients in courts throughout the United States, as well as in FINRA and AAA arbitrations. Erik has been retained as an expert witness in legal malpractice litigation.
Clients depend on Erik's counsel to resolve their issues and get on with their lives and businesses. Known for his ability to generate superior work product, Erik is tenacious, efficient, and always mindful of the client's bottom line.
Job Titles:
- Order of the Coif, Associate Editor of the Syracuse Law Review
Job Titles:
- Founder and Co - Managing Partner
Harvey M. Stone co-founded the firm, served as Managing Partner for most of its first forty years, and is currently Co-managing Partner. He has represented hundreds of clients, including business executives, lawyers, doctors, and corporations, in a broad range of civil and criminal matters. The firm's attorneys consult with him regularly for strategic advice in litigation and other important matters.
His vast appellate experience in the federal government and then in private practice has included cases before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, numerous other federal Circuit Courts, and the New York State Appellate Courts.
Harvey served as Chief of the Appeals Division, United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, where he supervised all of that office's appellate litigation, both civil and criminal, and briefed and argued major cases in the Second Circuit.
Among his many successful appeals in private practice, one of the most notable was a critical appellate victory for a prominent doctor who had been unjustly convicted of a serious criminal charge. After the conviction, the doctor's legal defense fund brought in Harvey, who prevailed in a court known for rarely overturning criminal convictions. This victory led to a new trial and subsequent acquittal, with the jury clearing the doctor of all charges. People v. Griffin, 242 A.D. 70 (1st Dept. 1998). The case was the subject of an extensive column in the Wall Street Journal by Dorothy Rabinowitz and was cited when Ms. Rabinowitz won a Pulitzer Prize.
Harvey began his career in the Appellate Section of the Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C., where he briefed and argued cases in the federal courts of appeals and the United States Supreme Court. When Harvey was just three years out of law school, the Solicitor General designated him to argue for the United States in Middendorf v. Henry, 425 U.S. 25 (1975), marking the first time in many years that a Criminal Division attorney was asked to argue before the Supreme Court.
Jim Roberts is an experienced white-collar criminal lawyer who represents companies and individuals in government inquiries and prosecutions, internal investigations, regulatory enforcement proceedings, securities litigation, and complex civil business litigation.
A former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney, Jim is a regular contributor to several legal publications, including the New York Law Journal, on leading-edge topics in white-collar defense.
Jeffrey M. Eilender is the co-managing partner of the firm and co-chair of the civil litigation group. His commercial litigation practice focuses on intra-corporate disputes and business separations, often when the future of the company or an owner's net assets are at risk. These cases are usually hotly contested and, unfortunately, often involve adult siblings or heirs warring with each other over family businesses when the founder is no longer on the scene. Jeff has represented all of the players in a business divorce; the companies, majority owners, and dissenting or oppressed minority owners. He has also prosecuted and defended derivative actions. Many of his business divorce matters have resulted in groundbreaking court rulings that are often cited by other courts and are the subject of articles and blogs by other lawyers. Jeff also frequently writes and speaks on these issues.
Moreover, the scope of Jeff's practice extends beyond intra-corporate disputes. With nearly 30 years of litigation experience, Jeff helps clients resolve virtually any kind of business conflict. He litigates all manner of real estate, contract, intellectual property, trade secrets, employment, fraud, and other business tort cases. Jeff represents large public entities, family businesses, and high net-worth individuals and celebrities such as AXA, Verizon, Oath (formerly AOL), ALP, Inc. (the company founded by artist Peter Max that owns and commercializes all of his art), Judith Regan, Perez Hilton, the Chetrit real estate family, the Lighthouse Group, Albert Einstein Medical School, Canon, and Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp.
Job Titles:
- Defended British Solicitor
Job Titles:
- Representing New York Real Estate Developer
Representing New York Real Estate Developer Jody Kriss in connection with a $100 million RICO claim involving Trump real estate projects, pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Job Titles:
- Partner at Nelson Mullins
Job Titles:
- Director of Administration & Operations
Job Titles:
- Bayou Hedge Fund Co - Founder
Represented James Marquez, Bayou Hedge Fund Co-Founder, in a fraud indictment brought by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Represented Roger Ehrler, the former CEO of Metallum Group Switzerland Ltd., with respect to complex business litigation matters.