Shapiro, Lifschitz & Schram

Even more important than Jim's past accomplishments is that he is a lawyer who, in more than a quarter century of constantly changing civil trial practice, has learned how to learn, so that no case is too difficult, complex, esoteric or arcane for him. Whether preparing and presenting his own client's case, or cross-examining the opposition, and regardless of whether the witness is a banker, engineer, chemist, economist, manager, broker, small business owner, major corporate executive, laborer, housewife or comes from any other walk of life, Jim gets his client's case to the judge, jury or arbitrator with the power, clarity and persuasion needed to win. Jim is a Martindale-Hubbell AV rated attorney.

• Represented a power plant owner against a contractor who charged that our client's claim for tens of millions of dollars of delay liquidated damages was a legally-unenforceable windfall. Using the expert testimony of a power industry economist, we provided proof that the liquidated damages were a reasonable approximation of actual damages so as to be legally enforceable.
• Counseled a corporation whose minority shareholders, as a prelude to what would have been a very complex and costly shareholders derivative action, made demand upon the corporation to file suit against several directors for alleged mismanagement and abuse of their positions. We counseled our client to elect additional directors, who were not associated with preexisting management, to form a "demand committee" to undertake an independent evaluation of the shareholder demand on behalf of the corporation. The demand committee's report, which found no mismanagement or abuse, was accepted by the appropriate court, the attempted shareholders derivative action was summarily dismissed, and the result was affirmed on appeal in an important precedent-setting decision. Bender v. Schwartz, 917 A.2d 142 (Md. App. 2007).
• A problem was presented, and we found a solution, when a contractor on a large Superfund remediation project made claims against our client for more than $60 million for alleged costs for owner-responsibility changes and it appeared that large amounts of the claimed costs had been improperly allocated to changed work. Because more than 300,000 cost transactions were involved, it was not practical to address each one individually before the court. The solution was to utilize an expert statistician who, working with a CPA, devised a statistically-valid sampling program to audit the contractor's cost database. A pretrial motion, using the results of that audit, was filed and the court ruled that the contractor's cost database, as a result of statistically-demonstrated unreliability, would not be admitted into evidence at trial.
• The client, a European company, was sued in an eastern United States court for claims regarding complex financial transactions. This presented the prospect of claims against the client, a foreign company, being tried before an American jury. We persuaded the American court, which admittedly had jurisdiction to hear the case, to dismiss the action without prejudice under the legal doctrine of forum non conveniens on the grounds that most witnesses would have to travel from Europe and that the American court would have to resolve a number of contested issues of foreign law. The result was that the case was tried in Europe before a judge without a jury, and the client prevailed.
• A problem was presented when a contractor on a large construction project made a weather force majeure claim for millions of dollars of extra craft labor costs allegedly incurred as a result of loss of efficiency during several unusually large snowfalls and several periods of unusually cold winter weather. The solution was an analysis and graphical presentation of the contractor's own weekly reports of craft labor productivity, and a graphical comparison of the fluctuations in such productivity relative to the periods of heavy snowfall and intense cold, which demonstrated a negative correlation between reduced craft labor productivity and the worst of the adverse weather. The claim of more than $9 million resulted in an award of less than $1 million.
• A problem was presented when an investment advisory firm client was sued for allegedly giving inadequate advice to wealthy investors during negotiations, with a major investment bank, for large over the counter market securities derivative transactions. The investors had been sued by the investment bank for millions of dollars allegedly owed as a result of dilution of the securities which were the subject of the transactions. The investors filed a third-party demand against the client alleging that there had been a failure to anticipate and warn of the potential for such a claim. The solution was a motion for summary judgment against the investment bank, which resulted in the Court dismissing the claim against the investors, and rendering moot the investors' claims against the client.