Biography
Steven B. Feigenbaum joined the firm in June 2018 as a partner in the litigation department. He is a highly experienced commercial and financial litigator whose practice spans an array of legal areas and industries. Mr. Feigenbaum has represented clients in such sectors as commercial banking, investment banking and other financial services, real estate, publishing, construction, architecture, communications, technology, pharmaceuticals, insurance, advertising, fashion and entertainment. He has extensive experience in a wide range of substantive legal areas, including contracts, banking, securities, employment, business torts, professional liability, bankruptcy, trade secrets, director and officer liability, construction and ERISA. Mr. Feigenbaum has tried a variety of commercial cases in New York state, federal district and bankruptcy courts, as well as elsewhere in the country, and has argued appeals in multiple federal and state appellate courts. He has served as lead counsel in numerous arbitrations, before such tribunals as the AAA, FINRA and JAMS, and has participated in multiple mediations and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. He also has extensive experience with governmental investigations, having represented clients in securities, antitrust and other investigations by such bodies as the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the SEC, FINRA, and various state Attorney General offices.
A significant part of Mr. Feigenbaum’s practice focuses on the representation of financial services firms - including investment banks, commercial banks, valuation firms, prime brokerage divisions and private equity firms - in actual or potential disputes involving such areas as commercial financing, securities, prime brokerage operations, investment banking fees, valuations of privately held companies, and private banking services. Mr. Feigenbaum has represented financial services firms in multiple contexts, including federal and state litigations, bankruptcy proceedings, arbitrations before FINRA and the AAA, federal governmental investigations, and third-party subpoenas. In recent years, much of Mr. Feigenbaum’s practice has focused on federal litigations, for major financial institutions, brought by judgment creditors of state sponsors of terrorism for the turnover of foreign assets blocked under regulations promulgated by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
An additional area in which Mr. Feigenbaum has extensive experience, across a wide spectrum of industries, involves employment and severance agreements of high-level executives. Mr. Feigenbaum regularly litigates, and provides counseling to corporations and executives on, matters relating to such areas as non-competition, non-solicitation and other restrictive covenants; the fiduciary duties of officers, managing directors and other high-level employees, as well as those of corporate board members; and the protection of trade secrets and other confidential or proprietary information. His litigation experience includes multiple applications for injunctive relief to enforce, or prevent the breach of, restrictive covenants, including provisions against the disclosure of proprietary information. The clients that he has represented in employment-related matters include investment banks, commercial banks, telecommunications companies, technology services companies, and mortgage lenders, as well as high-level executives within those industries.
Another significant part of Mr. Feigenbaum’s practice focuses on real estate disputes, including the related areas of construction disputes and architectural malpractice. Mr. Feigenbaum has represented real estate developers in such matters as financing-related disputes and litigation regarding the interpretation of agreements for the purchase or sale of commercial properties; architectural firms in litigations and arbitrations involving claims of professional negligence and the breach of architectural services agreements; and building owners and general contractors in defending against, among other things, claims under New York’s Labor Law, claims by subcontractors for breach of contract, and claims for allegedly defective construction work.
The breadth of Mr. Feigenbaum’s experience makes him qualified to handle business-related disputes and governmental investigations of almost any nature and involving almost any private or public entity. Of the dozens of litigations, arbitrations and investigations that he has handled in his career, some of the more notable ones, and the results he achieved, include the following:
- Obtained summary judgment, affirmed on appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, dismissing claims against a major financial institution for the attachment of $1.7 billion in bond proceeds alleged to have been held in a correspondent account at the bank of a premier international service provider for the global financial industry.
- Obtained summary judgment, on appeal to the First Department of New York’s Appellate Division, dismissing multi-million dollar claims for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty, brought by a private banking client against a major financial institution, that arose from the bank’s handling of certain of the client’s investment accounts held outside the bank.
- Served as co-lead counsel for the investment banking division of a major commercial bank in its successful defense, after a multi-week federal bench trial, against a corporate borrower’s claims that the bank had engaged in the commercially unreasonable disposition of the borrower’s stock collateralizing its loan from the bank.
- Represented a major investment bank, in an investigation by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, that served as a financial advisor to a leading communications company in connection with a highly publicized merger within the communications industry.
- Negotiated a favorable settlement, on behalf of the prime brokerage division of a major financial institution, of claims in a FINRA arbitration brought by an investor against the prime broker for its allegedly negligent execution of certain multi-million dollar mutual fund trades.
- Won an arbitration on behalf of venture capital investors who acquired a majority interest in an outdoor advertising company and were later sued by the former principal of the company for the alleged breach of employment and financing agreements entered into as part of the acquisition.
- Negotiated a favorable settlement, after three months of hearings in a AAA arbitration, on behalf of a prominent architectural firm of claims for architectural malpractice brought by the owner of a high-end residential unit in a recent, highly publicized condominium development in Manhattan.
- Negotiated a favorable settlement, after extensive litigation, on behalf of a software designer of digital imaging and clinical image management systems that was sued under the Copyright Act for the alleged improper use of certain source code and its derivatives.
- Obtained a favorable settlement on behalf of the outside directors of a film production company in a federal litigation brought against them by the company’s primary institutional lender, for breach of fiduciary duty, based on their alleged lack of oversight of the company’s management and financial affairs.
- Obtained a preliminary injunction and later a successful settlement on behalf of a major investment bank in a federal litigation brought by the bank against a former managing director who had misappropriated certain confidential information upon his resignation from the bank.
- Obtained a highly favorable arbitral award, after five weeks of hearings, on behalf of the owner of one of New York City’s largest commercial properties, which was sued by a prime contractor for the alleged breach of a construction contract entered into as part of a multi-million dollar renovation of the property.
Before joining Katsky Korins in June 2018, Mr. Feigenbaum had been a partner for almost 24 years at the boutique commercial litigation firm of Levi Lubarsky Feigenbaum & Weiss LLP. Before joining LLFW, Mr. Feigenbaum practiced at Proskauer Rose LLP, where he litigated a wide range of commercial cases. Mr. Feigenbaum is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. He graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Feigenbaum is a member of the New York City Bar Association, where he has served on the Arbitration Committee, the Committee on International Law, the Committee on International Arms Control and Securities Affairs, and the Committee on Alternative Dispute Resolution and its subcommittee on Mediator Quality Assurance. Mr. Feigenbaum served for many years as an arbitrator in the Small Claims Court for the Civil Court of New York City, and also served on the Board of Directors of Girls Global Education Fund, a non-profit organization that provided scholarships for girls in developing countries, particularly rural China, who would otherwise be unable to attend school.