By Scott Flaherty, from The Litigation Daily

Greenberg Traurig failed this week to shake off claims that the firm and a former partner concealed a forgery by an ex-client, paving the way for a possible trial in New York state court.

Ruling from the bench at a hearing Monday, New York Supreme Court Justice O. Peter Sherwood in Manhattan shot down competing summary judgment motions in an attorney deceit case brought against Greenberg Traurig and former partner Leslie Corwin, who’s now a partner at Blank Rome. The judge found there were factual issues in dispute that a jury should decide.

The case dates back to 2007, when plaintiff James Melcher alleged that Greenberg Traurig and Corwin looked the other way when the firm’s former hedge fund client, Brandon Fradd, allegedly doctored evidence in a prior breach of contract case.

Fradd and Melcher once co-owned the hedge fund Apollo Medical Fund Management LLC. But the partnership went south, and in 2003 Melcher filed a lawsuit accusing Fradd of systematically cheating him out of some of the fund’s earnings. Greenberg Traurig and Corwin took up Fradd’s defense in the contract case, which eventually resulted in a judgment of nearly $6.5 million in Melcher’s favor. The two sides reached a settlement in early 2014.

Melcher, who’s seeking about $18 million in treble damages in the attorney misconduct suit, has based his claims on a document that Fradd produced to support a motion to dismiss the contract case. Melcher alleges that Fradd forged and backdated the document, a supposed 1998 contract amendment, and later partly burned it to thwart a forensic ink-dating analysis. He also claims that Greenberg Traurig and Corwin initially concealed the burning incident from the judge who presided over the contract dispute.

Fradd maintains that the scorching was an accident that took place while he was boiling water in his kitchen to make tea. Greenberg Traurig and Corwin, defended by outside counsel at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, have fervently denied that they intentionally deceived the court. Corwin has testified that he always believed the document was genuine and that Fradd burned it by mistake.

In August, Melcher’s lawyer, Manhattan solo Jeffrey Jannuzzo, asked Sherwood to issue a summary judgment finding Greenberg Traurig and Corwin liable under New York’s attorney deceit law. The defense team for the law firm and Corwin, led by Simpson Thacher’s Roy Reardon, fired back in October with an opposition and a cross-motion for summary judgment, looking to have Melcher’s claims dismissed.

Sherwood on Monday declined to grant either side’s motion.

Jannuzzo told us that, following Sherwood’s ruling, he and his client want to “take this case to trial at the earliest possible date that the court will give us.”

Corwin wasn’t immediately available, and Simpson Thacher’s Reardon referred us to Greenberg Traurig for comment. A firm spokesperson sent this statement: “We continue to believe this case is, and will ultimately be shown to be, without merit.”

Monday’s decision came just a day before a different state judge in Manhattan heard arguments in Facebook Inc.’s case against against DLA Piper, Milberg, and other firms that represented Paul Ceglia in his failed lawsuit against the social media giant. That case also invokes New York’s attorney deceit statute, Judiciary Law § 487.

IMAGE: Former Greenberg Traurig partner Leslie Corwin, now at Blank Rome.
For more on this story go to: http://www.litigationdaily.com/id=1202724264881/Greenberg-Traurig-Faces-Trial-Over-Alleged-Client-Forgery#ixzz3Y9Us80o2