Author Biographies: New York Civil Practice Before Trial

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New York Civil Practice Before Trial

About the Authors

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The Honorable Myriam J. Altman served as an Associate Justice in the Appellate Division, Second Department, New York City from 1994 to 2004. She died on January 29, 2005.

Prior to her appointment as Associate Justice, she served as Judge of the Civil Court of the City of New York from 1978 to 1987 and Acting Justice of the Supreme Court from 1979 to 1997. She was elected Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York in 1987. In 1993 she presided over one of the four new specialized commercial parts in New York County.

Justice Altman was chair of the Appellate Division’s In-house Continuing Legal Education Committee, and a member of the State Bar’s Standing Committee on Civil Practice Law and Rules. She was chair of the Litigation Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and co-chair of the Office of Court Administration Committee on Case Management Education. She was a member of the Commercial Courts Task Force, and from 1988 to 1993 was a member of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. In October 1996, July 1993, and October 1993, Justice Altman was found qualified for appointment to the Court of Appeals by the Commission on Judicial Nomination. She graduated from the NYU School of Law.

Michael H. Barr is a partner with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal in New York City. His practice concentrates on complex commercial, class action, insurance coverage, and securities litigation across a broad spectrum of substantive areas, including consumer fraud, environmental, insurance, trade regulation, real estate, professional liability, and contractual disputes.

Mr. Barr is presently serving as national coordinating counsel for an international insurer in defending a series of class actions involving retrospective premium workers’ compensation issues. Over the past five years, he has defended another major insurer against allegations of improper life insurance sales practices in a consolidated multi-district litigation in federal court and before a multi-state task force of state insurance departments.

He has successfully defended a broad array of other companies in bad faith and other insurance coverage actions, including numerous appeals. He has lectured and written on a variety of insurance coverage issues, and has delivered papers at seminars on advertising injury, securities coverage, and bad faith issues. He has also successfully represented investor groups, bank directors and public companies in contested securities and mergers and acquisition cases.

Mr. Barr is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.

Burton N. Lipshie has since 1977 been the Managing Attorney of the 60-lawyer Litigation Department of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in New York City, and the firm’s national litigation coordinator.

He is responsible for providing procedural expertise in all litigation matters handled by the New York City office, and for creating and running programs on litigation skills and advanced legal writing. He has a general litigation practice, with an emphasis on motions and appellate work.

Before joining Stroock, Mr. Lipshie was an Assistant District Attorney in New York County from 1967 to 1971, and Law Secretary to Justice Abraham Gellinoff, Supreme Court, New York County and Appellate Term, First Department from 1971 to 1977.

Since 1985, Mr. Lipshie has been an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law where he teaches New York Practice, Legal Writing, and Moot Court. For nine years in a row he was named “Outstanding Adjunct Professor” and now the award is named after him.

He serves on the Advisory Committee on Civil Practice to the Chief Administrative Judge, the CPLR Committee of the State Bar Association, and the Departmental Disciplinary Committee of the Appellate Division, First Department. He has provided the annual CPLR update at the Unified Court System annual judicial seminars since 1993, as well as the annual seminar for Law Clerks and Court Attorneys, and has delivered the annual Civil Law Update at the Bar Association of the City of New York.

Sharon Stern Gerstman has been the Principal Law Clerk for the Eighth Judicial District (Buffalo) of the New York Supreme Court since 1981. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Buffalo Law School, where she has taught New York Civil Practice since 1987.

Mrs. Gerstman currently serves on the ABA Board of Governors, ABA House of Delegates, and multiple committees of the ABA Section of Taxation. She is also a member of the New York State Bar Executive Committee and House of Delegates, and is Vice-Chair of the State Bar’s Standing Committee on Civil Practice Law and Rules.

She is on the Professional Ethics and Judicial Screening Committees for the Bar Association of Erie County, and has served on its Board of Directors. She was President of the Women Lawyers of Western New York.

She has written for the Practical Lawyer, ABA, and New York State Bar, and speaks annually at the ABA Annual Meeting. She has a JD from the University of Pittsburgh and an LLM from Yale Law School.