PRACTICE EXPERIENCE | SECURITIES

In securities litigation, the firm's experience includes broker-dealer and shareholder derivative cases, claims for underwriter due-diligence liability and other cases of securities fraud. It has litigated cases involving hedge funds, securitizations, swaps and other derivatives.

David v. Goliaths: The Zimmett firm's small size has not prevented it from handling large cases against major firms, including Baker & McKenzie; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; Dewey Ballantine; LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae; McDermott Will & Emery; Morgan, Lewis & Bockius; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; and Williams & Connolly.

In a dispute between two founders of a hedge fund, Zimmett represented his client against Debevoise & limpton and Hogan & Hartson in four related cases in New York and Delaware, one of which was a three-week jury trial.

In an action arising from a series of failed securitizations, Zimmett's firm processed 200,000 documents in a warehouse as part of the discovery process. To handle the workload, two of the firm's associates worked with an associate from a local law firm based near the warehouse and a few contract attorneys were retained on a temporary basis. The team created a database that easily enabled Zimmett to locate and access documents identified during the search as needed.

Zimmett drew upon his experience in litigating aspects of international swap agreements to publish an article in the July, 1998 International Financial Law Review on a potential weakness in standard master agreement derivatives contracts. His argument was succinctly put in the article's title: "ISDA Master Agreement: Can a Creditor Swipe Your Swap?" A partner specializing in derivative transactions at a large firm in New York described the article as "required reading" for his associates. While seemingly arcane to the uninitiated, Zimmett's article concluded by stepping back from contract minutiae to make the broader problem-solving point that is the hallmark of his approach to the law:

"In the litigation between a counterparty and its creditor(s), the bank-dealer should not end up the loser. The counter-parties have other means to deal with their creditors. The bank-dealers have the means to revise their ISDA Master Agreement to better protect themselves and cut the risk that their counterparties' creditors might swipe their swaps."