Representative Experience
Represents national and regional broadcast and print media clients in all aspects of communications law, including defamation, privacy, copyright, press access, reporter’s privilege and related First Amendment issues and tort and contract claims

Lead counsel to Clear Channel Outdoor in a First Amendment challenge to the New York City regulatory structure along its arterial highways

Lead counsel to Yellow Book USA defending false advertising litigation instituted by Verizon Directories Corporation

Leads a steering committee of over a hundred of plaintiffs damaged in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and successfully overcame the Port Authority’s effort to prevent disclosure of the relevant reports by its security consultants which led to a jury verdict on liability against the Port Authority

Counsel to most daily and weekly newspapers in New York in the effort to resist draconian proposed newsrack legislation leading to adoption of a near-model law from the perspective of the newspaper industry

Counsel to McGraw Hill (Standard & Poor’s and Platts) in a number of proceedings that established that the publisher of ratings of publicly traded securities and the publisher of price indices were entitled to the journalists’ privilege recognized under federal and state law

Successfully represented the directors and officers of the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance in a major trademark and copyright litigation brought by the heir of Martha Graham

Represented Home Box Office in a commercialization claim based on an award winning documentary

Represents River Road Productions, the producer of the motion picture "FUR"

Counsel to Hit the Ground Running Films, producer of the award-winning documentary "Capturing the Friedmans"

Counsel to the leading major museums and cultural institutions which appeared as amici curiae in the litigation between the Brooklyn Museum and the City of New York regarding "Sensation" exhibit

Recent Cases

Zelnik v. F.I.T. et al. Won appeal sustaining a summary judgment dismissing a First Amendment retaliation claim that plaintiff was not afforded professor emeritus status in retaliation for speech related to a matter of public concern after the District Court having determined that plaintiff failed to demonstrate any materials adverse change in the terms and conditions of his employment as a consequence of his speech.

Verizon Directories Corporation v. Yellow Book USA. Lead counsel in false advertising trial in Eastern District of New York.

U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. Representing publisher covering the energy industry asserting journalist's priviledge in opposition to subpoena from CFTC.

Doe v. Merck & Co. Successfully vacated a $2 million dollar punitive judgment against pharmaceutical manufacturer and its advertising agency based on improper use of model’s photograph in promotional brochure.

Lacoff v. Buena Vista. Represented book publishing subsidiary of Disney in the successful effort to resist a class action claim based on errors on the covers of the books of the “Beardstown Ladies.”

Counsel to Business Week in the successful effort to persuade the Sixth Circuit to overturn an injunction against publication of information from a sealed document in Procter & Gamble v. Bankers Trust.

Counsel to William Morrow & Co. in the successful effort to resist a subpoena by the Office of Independent Counsel for the unpublished manuscript of the autobiography of Webster Hubbell.

Representative Clients
Alpha Media (Maxim and Blender)
Cantor Fitzgerald
Clear Channel Outdoor
Discover Magazine
Employers Reinsurance
Harper’s Magazine
Home Box Office
McGraw-Hill
Random House
River Road Productions
St. Martin’s Press
Wenner Media (Rolling Stone, US Weekly, Men’s Journal)
Yellow Book USA
Ziff Davis Media

Publications and Presentations
For more than 25 years has been the regular lecturer at the Practising Law Institute’s annual Communications Law Seminar and principal author of the annual outline on the law of newsgathering, invasion of privacy and related torts

Memberships and Activities
Named as one of "America's Leading Business Lawyers" by Chambers USA, 2003-2006, citing him as "an undeniably superb lawyer” and a “tenacious litigator who knows his area backward and is never stuck for an idea."

Named as one of the "Best Lawyers in America" in First Amendment Law by Woodward/White, 1995-1996; 1997-98; 1999-2000; 2001-02; 2003-04; 2005-06; 2006; 2007; 2008

Named as one of the Lawdragon 500 Lawyers in America” in 2005; 2006; 2007

Selected to “New York Super Lawyers,” Law & Politics, 2007-2008

Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Magazine Publishers of America; serves on the Lawyer’s Committee of the Association of American Publishers; and was a co-founder of the Libel Defense Resource Center; Member, Copyright Society; Member, Advisory Board of the Media Law Reporter

Former Chair, Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Communications and Media Law of the New York City Bar Association

Chair, The Fund for Modern Courts, 2006-Present

Founder, Lankenau Kovner & Outten which merged with Davis Wright Tremaine in 1998

Prior Public Service
Former Chair of The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct

Corporation Counsel of the City of New York, 1990-1991

Member, President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, 1993-2001

Education
J.D., Columbia University School of Law

B.A., Yale College