Category: Commercial Litigation

Lori Bullock, Katherine Charonko, and Joshua Hammack Named to 2024 Lawdragon X – The Next Generation List

Bailey Glasser partners Lori A. Bullock, Katherine Charonko, and Joshua I. Hammack have been named to Lawdragon’s 2024 500 X – The Next Generation guide. This recognition acknowledges the achievements of the top 500 lawyers who have vaulted to the forefront of the legal profession. This Lawdragon recognition is prestigious as the 500 lawyers included were selected through a process of “select[ing] members of this guide through our time-honed process of submissions, independent research and vetting with friends and foes.”

Lori Bullock is an impactful litigator, handling challenging cases across several litigation areas, including Title IX athletics, labor and employment, sexual harassment, disability discrimination, education law, and civil rights, and is the managing partner of BG’s Des Moines, Iowa office. Lori has won ground-breaking Title IX settlements for student-athletes at nine U.S. colleges and universities for violating the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funds, including appeals to federal circuit court and the Supreme Court included in this submission. She was also part of the team that won the $5 million judgment against “MyPillow’s” Mike Lindell related to false claims made about the 2020 election.

Katherine Charonko is a litigator and head of the firm’s sophisticated and cutting-edge ESI group where she oversees e-discovery in complex disputes involving billions of documents and ensures proper collection, production, and review of electronic data. Kate holds the global Certified e-Discovery Specialist (CEDS) credential, a global recognition that assures clients and co-counsel that our approaches are compliant, efficient, cost-effective, and reduces risk in all phases of e-Discovery. In addition, Kate is a key part of the firm’s multidistrict litigation (MDL) teams, which concentrate largely on automotive and medical device product liability actions. She serves as liaison director of e-Discovery and ESI on several MDL leadership committees nationwide and has worked on landmark MDL matters including some of the largest vehicle defect litigations in history, including the Volkswagen emissions case, and many more. Indeed, Kate was recognized for her product liability work in this year’s Chambers & Partners accolades in the nationwide plaintiffs category, among other recognitions.

Joshua Hammack handles complicated matters from their inception through appeal. He has briefed and argued appeals in state and federal courts across the country for a host of substantive legal areas, including Title IX, the Commerce Clause, contract interpretation, deed construction, statutes of limitation, and the Video Privacy Protection Act. He has briefed multiple issues to the Supreme Court of the United States. In just the last eight months, he has argued before the Second, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits, as well as intermediate appellate courts in West Virginia and New York. Members of the firm regularly gather to watch or listen to his oral arguments, and he also hosts an annual training session on brief writing for lawyers at the firm.

To learn more about the 2024 LDX500 guide, visit: https://www.lawdragon.com/guides/2024-06-28-the-2024-lawdragon-500-x-the-next-generation

BG Welcomes New Lawyer Paul-Kalvin Collins to Washington, D.C. Office

Bailey Glasser is pleased to announce Paul-Kalvin Collins has joined the firm’s Washington, D.C. office as a lawyer in its national Commercial & Environmental Litigation Practice Group.

Cary Joshi, Bailey Glasser’s Commercial & Environmental Litigation Practice Group Leader, stated: “Congratulations to our newest D.C. attorney, Paul-Kalvin Collins. Paul-Kalvin brings unique work experience from his previous career and education that will be valuable to the clients we serve.”

As part of the Commercial and Environmental Litigation team, Paul-Kalvin will represent clients in complex, high-stakes litigation across the full spectrum of business interests. He will also be assisting in matters with the firm’s corporate practice group, which handles corporate and commercial transactional matters of many kinds.

Paul-Kalvin is a 2023 graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, and while a law student he served as a law clerk and summer associate with Bailey Glasser, as well as a summer law clerk in the Civil Division of the D.C. Superior Court.

Paul-Kalvin previously was the Director of Urban Teachers, an alternative teacher preparation program located in Baltimore, Maryland and has more than 10 years of educational leadership experience.

To learn more about Paul-Kalvin Collins, please visit here.

#Welcome #NewLawyer #BaileyGlasser

BG Wins Writ of Prohibition Before State of West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals

A Bailey Glasser litigation team composed of founding partner Ben Bailey and lawyer Christopher Smith succeeded in obtaining a writ of prohibition from the State of West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals on behalf of our client, Pachira Energy.

In this action for extraordinary relief, Pachira sought a writ of prohibition to prevent the Circuit Court of Monongalia County from a January 2023 order by that court which ordered disassociation of a partnership even though no party to the litigation sought disassociation in the underlying litigation. The underlying litigation involved the requested dissolution and winding up of a partnership under the West Virginia Revised Uniform Partnership Act. However, instead of ordering this dissolution, the circuit court disassociated Pachira from the partnership, effectively kicking it out of the partnership while allowing the partnership to continue operating.

In recognizing that “extraordinary remedies are reserved for ‘really extraordinary causes,’ the appellate court found for our client and determined that: “[a]fter a careful review of the parties’ arguments, the record before this Court and the applicable law, we conclude that the circuit court committed a clear legal error in ordering dissociation when that relief was not requested by either party. Accordingly, we grant the petition for writ of prohibition, vacate the order dissociating Pachira from the water system association, and remand this case to the circuit court for further proceedings.”

Obtaining relief of this nature is rare, but our litigators felt was warranted in this particular case. The case is now back before the Circuit Court for additional litigation. To read the Court’s Memorandum Decision, please visit here.

Brian Glasser Named a Top 200 Lawyer in America by Forbes

Bailey Glasser founding partner Brian Glasser has been named one of “America’s Top 200 Lawyers” by Forbes in its first-ever elite lawyer list.

Forbes described its criteria as follows: “[t]he elite lawyers on this list were selected through a rigorous, multi-stage process of researching, evaluating and rating thousands of candidates, conducted by an editorial team with broad experience in law practice and the legal marketplace. The result is a collection of top lawyers involved in the most consequential cases, deals or legal trends in recent years . . . . they all share reputations for integrity, records of excellence—and Forbes’ recognition as the best in the business. What follows is a power list of lawyers whose skill, passion and purpose set them apart—for when you or your business need it most.”

In the last two years alone, Brian won a $5 million award against MyPillow CEO and election conspiracist Michael Lindell; helped lead the challenge to Johnson & Johnson’s “Texas Two Step” bankruptcy maneuver on behalf of people injured by J&J’s asbestos-riddled talc products; helped win dismissal of the bankruptcy of 3M subsidiary Aearo Technologies by a federal judge which thereafter resulted in the $6 billion settlement of more than 260,000 lawsuits brought by veterans and U.S. service members alleging that 3M military earplugs caused their hearing loss; and has won tens of millions of dollars for his clients in other lawsuits. He has also led the filing of hundreds of lawsuits on behalf of people abused as minors by the State of Maryland’s juvenile hall facilities via a new law passed in October 2023 that permitted previously time-barred claims by abuse survivors.

Read more here.

BG Wins $40 Million Jury Trial in Federal Texas Court


Washington, D.C.: On March 6, 2024, a Bailey & Glasser trial team won a $40 million jury verdict in Texas federal court in a fraud case against Mark Siffin and Paul Cyphers arising out of the bankruptcy of MTE Holdings, LLC. The case is Thomas Bennett, Trustee for the MTE Litigation Trust v. Mark Siffin et al., U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, 7:21-cv-00214-DC-RCG. 

The Bailey Glasser trial team consisted of partners Robert Bell, Cary Joshi, Elliott McGraw, and John Turner, along with paralegal Manny Rios.

Bailey Glasser’s client, the Trustee of the MTE Litigation Trust, asserted fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims against certain officers of MTE Holdings, LLC and their affiliated company MDC Energy LLC, an oil and gas exploration and production company headquartered in Midland, Texas. The beneficiaries of the trust are a group of financial institutions that had lent almost half a billion dollars to MTE Holdings before MTE filed for bankruptcy in October 2019. The group of lenders sued the individual officers of MTE for intentionally misrepresenting the financial health of the company in order to continue to draw on the loan.

After deliberating for just two hours, the jury awarded the plaintiff $40 million, finding both Mr. Siffin and Mr. Cyphers liable for fraud.

“The plaintiff’s interests have been vindicated,” said Cary Joshi, counsel for the MTE Litigation Trust. “Our client knew they had been defrauded and the jury knew it, too.”

Litigator Elliott McGraw Elevated to Partner


Bailey Glasser is pleased to announce that Washington, D.C. litigator Elliott McGraw has been elevated to partner effective January 2024.

“Congratulations to Elliott on her much-deserved promotion to partner at Bailey Glasser,” said Cary Joshi, Commercial & Environmental Litigation Practice Group Leader. “Elliott’s tenacity and strategic skills as a litigator are exceptionally valuable to our clients as she handles some of our most complicated matters.”

Elliott is a member of the Commercial & Environmental Litigation Practice Group, where she focuses her practice on complex commercial disputes in state and federal courts across the country and represents institutional investors and asset managers, as both plaintiffs and defendants, in contract and tort-based claims arising from financial fraud, accounting malpractice, and corporate malfeasance. Elliott has an extensive privacy and data protection background and was named a Best Lawyers Ones to Watch in Privacy and Data Security Law in Washington, D.C. in 2024.

Elliott commented: “I love practicing law with Bailey Glasser and I’m very excited about the additional opportunities to contribute to this world class group of litigators and our fantastic clients as a partner.”

Bailey Glasser’s Commercial & Environmental Litigation practice has a proven track record of successfully handling national high-stakes litigation in state and federal courts and before arbitrators and mediators across the country. We represent businesses in many industries and of all sizes from Fortune 500 companies to family offices, individuals, governmental entities, government servants, and even other law firms call upon us to lead bet-the-company litigation and parachute into cases and appeals when our deep experience and resources are necessary.

Elliott is a vital team member in some of our most complex matters. Notably, she was a member of the Bailey Glasser team that served as co-lead trial counsel representing the Official Committee of Talc Plaintiffs in its high-profile challenge against Johnson & Johnson’s “Texas Two Step” bankruptcy ploy to offset the liability of 38,000 lawsuits related to the company’s alleged cancer-causing baby powder. She has also contributed her time to litigating cases on behalf of women athletes in Title IX sex discrimination cases against universities across the country. Elliott’s experience also includes advising organizational and individual clients navigating government or internal investigations and has represented clients in front of Congressional committees, including the 2019 Impeachment Inquiry into then-President Donald Trump.

To learn more about Elliott’s experience please visit this link.

Federal Law Clerk Joins Morgantown, WV Office

Bailey & Glasser, LLP welcomes lawyer Gabrielle Marcum to our Morgantown, WV office. Gabrielle has joined our national Commercial & Environmental Litigation Practice Group, where she will represent a diverse range of business interests and industries – from solo entrepreneurs to multi-national corporations – in state and federal courts nationwide.

Gabrielle brings valuable courtroom and legal writing experience, having completed two prestigious federal court clerkships in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia.

As a West Virginia University College of Law graduate, Gabrielle was an Executive Editor of the WVU Law Review and President of the Women’s Leadership Council. She was also a student clinician in the Child and Family Advocacy Clinic, providing vital legal services to children and families of limited income in custody matters, education advocacy, and accessing healthcare resources.

Gabrielle returns to Bailey Glasser after previously serving as a summer associate at the firm in 2019 and we are excited to welcome her back to our Morgantown office.

Learn more about Gabrielle Marcum here.

#BaileyGlasser #CommercialLitigation #Welcome

BG Team Wins $19.96 Million Judgment on Behalf of Wildcat Coal, LLC

On October 12, 2023, Bailey Glasser prevailed in a lease royalty dispute on behalf of our client Wildcat Coal, LLC, obtaining a judgment of nearly $20 million. This dispute involved calculation of advance royalties in a coal mining lease. The judgment was issued by Judge Freudenthal of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming.

The defendant, Bridger Coal Company, argued that it did not owe Wildcat any advance royalties despite a provision of the mining lease that obligated Bridger to mine at least 45% of its coal from Wildcat’s properties.

“We are glad that Wildcat will receive the advance royalties that Bridger agreed to pay under the lease,” said Bailey Glasser founding partner Brian Glasser, lead counsel in this case.

In addition to Mr. Glasser, the Bailey Glasser team included partners Leslie Brueckner, Jennifer Fahey, and Ben Schwartzman.

The Order granting judgment can be viewed here.

BG Victory in Sixth Circuit Stands as U.S. Supreme Court Denies Certiorari

On October 2, 2023, Joshua Hammack, Nick Johnson, and Chris Smith continued their string of litigation wins on behalf of Foresight Coal Sales. For years, Foresight has argued a Kentucky law—SB 257—violates the Constitution by discriminating against interstate commerce. In February 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Foresight’s constitutional claim was likely to succeed. Put simply, it held Kentucky could not “have its cake and eat it, too.”

Kentucky filed a petition for certiorari, asking the Supreme Court of the United States to review the Sixth Circuit’s decision. To show Kentucky’s arguments were wrong, the Bailey Glasser appellate team turned to a timeless classic: Animal Farm. (This one is worth a read!) On Monday, the Supreme Court denied Kentucky’s petition for certiorari.

For more please follow this link.

42 Bailey Glasser Lawyers Named To The Best Lawyers in America & Best Lawyers: Ones To Watch 2024 Guides

Today we announce that 42 Bailey Glasser lawyers have been recognized across various categories (including one as a “Lawyer of the Year”) in the 30th edition of The Best Lawyers in America® and the fourth edition of Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in America®.

“Lawyer of the Year” honors are awarded annually to only one lawyer per practice area in each region with extremely high overall feedback from their peers, making it an exceptional distinction.

For more, follow this link.

%d bloggers like this: