NJ’s Unique Law Practice Groups

Specialized attorneys fill critical niche roles in legal profession. 

By George N. Saliba, Managing Editor  On Nov 9, 2015

Law is an extraordinarily vast and complex field, with no one attorney – or, in some cases, no single law firm – able to address all of its facets with masterful skill. Legal specialization is often the key to successful outcomes for clients, regardless of whether they are small businesses or multinational corporations.

As Ronald Leibman, partner of the firm and co-chair of Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti’s transportation and logistics group, in Morristown, explains, “There is a place in this world for the generalist [attorney], particularly when dealing with small companies and individuals, and a generalist is better than no legal advice at all. However, when you are talking about the business realm and issues that could have unknown consequences … a generalist is just not going to have the [expertise].”

Beyond specialty staples such as employment law or international law, some New Jersey firms have practices such as Genova Burns’ “Craft Beer, Spirits & Alcohol Law Practice Group,” for example. Separately, as another example, McCarter & English has an “Israel Practice,” which is comprised of attorneys who are fluent in Hebrew and also have strong ties and a wide network of contacts in the Israeli business community.

Aviation Law

At Morristown-based Ogletree Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., Richard C. Mariani, shareholder, is an aviation employment law expert. While commercial airlines have a 65-year-old mandatory retirement age, one issue Mariani’s clients grapple with is terminating elderly private-sector corporation pilots, who often cannot be “let go” solely due to their age (the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission forbids this). Certain large corporations, in certain parts of the United States, may be able to establish a mandatory retirement age for older pilots by demonstrating that their flying responsibilities are equivalent to those of pilots at commercial airlines and, moreover, that these older pilots are statistically more likely have sudden medical events such as heart attacks and strokes. However, this path can be legally risky for companies, and expose them to age discrimination lawsuits.

Speaking broadly, Mariani says, “I recall one situation from an HR person who said, ‘Look, the other day, the chairman was flying, they boarded the airplane, they were ready to taxi off the ramp, and the chairman heard the engines rev up, and the plane [went over a] bump. [The chairman] realized later that the pilot had forgotten to remove the chocks from one of the wheels, and basically had to power the plane over a chock that hadn’t been removed.’ Now, that’s not a safety issue, but it’s just a dumb mistake. And so the HR person tells me: ‘The chairman is becoming concerned.’ And, the question was: ‘The pilot is 68 years old. That’s beyond the age 65 [commercial] airline retirement age. Can we retire him?’ And I told the client, ‘No, you can’t retire him just because of his age. Basically, what you have to do is document the issues, as they occur. If the documentation shows that the individual pilot has really been committing an increasing number of errors, and errors of an increasingly serious nature, then you may have grounds to terminate him.’ What I tell clients, in terms of the big picture, is this: ‘You have to have a good reason to fire a pilot, in the absence of a mandatory retirement policy (which, again, carries its own risks).’”

When public safety is involved, there may be a lower threshold for terminating a pilot when compared to, say, a corporate secretary who absent-mindedly places files in the incorrect filing cabinets.

Mariani explains, “From my general experience litigating cases, including age cases for a number of decades, when public safety is at issue, the courts do take that into account, when evaluating the seriousness of the error for which the person was fired. Now, just like in any other situation, you have to be consistent. If you have five pilots in your flight department, and one of them is a hotshot ex-Blue Angels pilot, who the chairman just loves, and he powered over a chock six months ago, and the chairman said, ‘Hey, pretty fancy flying there, Jack!’ you can’t fire the older guy, for that. You have to be consistent. But, that is true of any wrongful termination or discrimination case, when someone is fired for poor performance.”

That said, in the corporate aviation realm, companies can implement safety management systems, which may include installing Quick Access Recorders (QARs) in their aircraft. These devices can – in a very detailed way – review all of the pilots’ actions, and provide a framework for disciplinary action or termination, depending on the seriousness of any errors. Establishing telephone hotlines for employees to report unsafe aircraft operation is another step companies may wish to take.

Overall, regarding his law specialty, Mariani says, “It’s fascinating to me when I am able to combine employment law, which I have done for 40-some-odd years, and bring to bear the experience that I have accumulated as a commercial pilot for even more years than that. When I can combine those two interests, it is very exciting.”

Emergency Planning and Practice Group

Separately, at Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox LLP’s Emergency Planning and Response Group, Partner Suzanne Ilene Schiller explains, “I would say that most of our clients are educated – or we have educated them – about their ongoing responsibilities, as far as being owners and operators of facilities or modes of transportation that involve the handling of hazardous waste, or chemicals. However, while everybody thinks they are prepared for an emergency, sometimes it is bigger than what they had anticipated. Having a plan prepares you, but oftentimes what happens at the moment – onsite – [is something that] you are not prepared for. Without a good breadth of experience of what those eventualities might be, [companies] sometimes find themselves not sure where to turn.”

Manko Gold has two on-staff environmental engineers, one of whom specializes in drafting emergency management plans and conducting audits. For new clients in this field, the technical consultant typically travels to the client’s facility and conducts an audit. This may include examining how the facility operates, what chemicals it handles, what waste it deals with, where that waste travels, and, also, how it moves through – and out of – the facility. Manko Gold might also examine a client’s existing emergency management plans.

Overall, the information is reviewed in Manko Gold’s law offices, and attorneys examine applicable laws. The law firm then collaborates with the client to draft, and, if necessary, re-draft (if the client has an out-of-date plan) an emergency management plan suitable for the facility and its potential incident risks.

Next, Manko Gold might design and/or stage emergency training exercises, either through the firm, or in conjunction with outside consultants. All told, clients not only have a written emergency plan, but each person knows his or her responsibilities when responding to an incident.

Partner Christopher Ball says, “We mentioned the incident command system, which is a structure that many regulators and private entities use as a framework to respond to incidents including releases of hazardous substances. Under that command system, a point person for communications is frequently established. There is a joint information center, and head [person], there. If a client is up to speed with its incident command system, and has gone through training, it actually can flow into a structure where nobody is ‘going off the rails,’ because there is a structure of communication. The incident command structure [dictates] that the public relations person is going to vet things out, before he or she starts responding too quickly, with PR statements. The ideal is to cover yourself in an incident by having done the legwork and the planning in advance, and having your clients understand the importance of cross-communications between their operational response people, their PR response people – and those of us really keeping an eye on the legal issues.”

Design Professionals Group

Different types of concerns arise for PIB Law’s design professionals practice group’s clients. If a design professional client (such as an architect) has a potential opportunity, it approaches PIB Law with a contract and discusses its contents and demands. The design professional might want to discuss whether or not it is an appropriate opportunity, and explore any potential risks contained within the design contract’s language. Also discussed is the unfortunate possibility of the project going awry, and potential legal exposure issues.

Anthony W. Vaughn, Jr., a member of PIB Law (the firm has New Jersey offices in Somerset), says, “We use that [time] as an opportunity to advise them and identify those issues. Although we can’t guarantee that there is no possibility of a claim [against them], we at least try to mitigate the risk [when they] enter into the contract. The next phase – and it may be during the project – is when the client will contact us and ask us how to navigate around complaints made by their contractor, or an owner, on the job. It might be regarding complaints about their performance, and they will ask us for recommendations on how to resolve the dispute in order to keep the project going, and keep their client happy. On occasions, there are unfortunate occurrences when a claim does get filed either by their client or by a third party. Maybe it’s a neighbor. Or, it is a case of trip and fall. It might be just a bystander who got injured on the site, and there are complaints about the design of a feature on the project (such as a ramp, stairway or even an air conditioning system).

“Usually, our client’s insurance carrier will hire us to represent them to defend their interests in the litigation. Of course, that can go from the complaint phase all the way through discovery and trial, if necessary. But, our representation doesn’t end there. We also use the end of the case as an opportunity to talk to our client concerning ‘lessons learned.’ We can talk about what occurred, what issues arose, and how they can avoid those particular issues from occurring in the future.”

Community Association Law

At Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla, P.C. (offices in Red Bank, Trenton and Newark), J. Scott Anderson is shareholder, chairman of the Planned Real Estate Development Law Department and co-chairman of the Real Estate, Redevelopment and Planned Real Estate Department.

Regarding the firm’s specialized Community Association Law practice area, he says, “We tend to set up condominium [and] age-restricted communities, for developers, and register their public offering plans. In order to offer an interest in one of these things, you have to have a public offering plan, and we register those with the state. We also represent a few [condo and homeowner] associations, but, that is not our main focus. [Regarding developers], in order to offer an interest in one of these communities, you have to have an offering plan [with the] the Department of Community Affairs (DCA). That’s mainly what we do; we register these offering plans.”

Why the need for a legal specialty? Brain Harvey, shareholder with the firm in both the Real Estate, Redevelopment and Planned Real Estate Development and the Community Association Law practice areas, explains, “There are regulations, and then there are sort of certain policies that the DCA follows. Having experience working with the DCA on a consistent basis gives you a better understanding of how they are interpreting the regulations and implementing their policies.”

Anderson adds, “There are lot of policies that DCA comes up with, that kind of control how this stuff works. And they are not in the regulations. So, you need to be in tune with it, to be efficient.”

Michael J. Vitiello, shareholder and co-chairman of the Community Association Law Group, adds, “On other matters, when we are not dealing with the DCA, we find today that our clients are really demanding efficiency, and you gain a good measure of efficiency by going to somebody who specializes in the area of the law you are talking about.”

Vitiello adds, “Obviously, we can’t represent an association when we are also representing the developer who builds the community (at least while the community is still going through transition issues between the developer and the new unit owners). However, when we do represent a community, and we are only representing the board of the condo association or the homeowners association, we deal with a host of issues the board is faced with that need special counsel, because they are not legal issues that would typically pop up in other areas of the law.

“[For example], we might have associations that contact us that want to exclude pets from the entire community, because of dog bite issues, or liability issues. We also have associations that already have that restriction in place, but they want to eliminate it now to allow pets, because unit owners are complaining that it is hard to re-sell their units (pet owners can’t buy them). … We’ll occasionally get a call from a unit owner, when we don’t represent the association, and the unit owner will tell us: ‘My association is telling us that every unit owner must do ‘x’; I don’t believe they have the authority to make me do that.’ And in some cases, it’s really the same exact area of the law, but we might represent a unit owner in trying to deal with the board, and discuss with the board why they may or may not have those rights, or how we can modify the approach, to make both the board and the unit owner happy.”

Transportation and Logistics

In a separate arena, Ronald Leibman of Riker Danzig’s specialized transportation law and logistics group, explains, “We basically deal with the movement and storage of goods, and anything related to it. It was originally called transportation, because that’s just what I thought of, and it is now called transportation/logistics.”

He adds, “My clientele is multi-national, national and very large regional companies who realized that they had a lack of internal expertise. I was lucky in the sense that in past 15 years, the idea of logistics has changed; it was like this ‘back office thing’ that you had to have and no one wanted, and [now] it is a C-Level function. Most companies now have some sort of C-Level supply chain gurus, and it is recognized that there are supply chain risks. [Also,] there is recognition that it is the second largest part of the GNP. It was like the last uncharted area that corporations had overlooked … With this growth and understanding under the C-Level function, people start taking it more seriously. There has been a rush by law firms to do the practice. By the way, very few [law firms] really [practice] this in New Jersey, in particular. I can’t say this with absolute certainty, but I believe we are the only full-service logistics practice in the state. [There is] a very good railroad practice, down in southern New Jersey. Other people do little parts of it, here and there. But, I believe that we are the only full-service logistics practice. We are certainly the only Chambers’ rated supply chain transportation practice in the state, and I am very proud of that because there are 11 other practices, nationally. We are a national practice. We have, in the past year and a half, moved very much into the international sphere. We represent some very large multi-nationals.”

Conclusion

While the above law practice groups are merely examples of legal specialization, in a global economy where knowledge is key, New Jersey’s law firms can expertly assist with every conceivable concern clients might have.

 

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