Michael M. Fay’s practice covers a broad spectrum of litigation involving complex financial products, bankruptcy, corporate governance, general commercial, insurance, real estate, toxic tort and product liability matters. He is a member of the New York bar and has practiced law in New York for over 25 years.
Michael has represented numerous investment firms, hedge funds, financial institutions, and corporations in courts in New York, New Jersey, Alabama, Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and several other jurisdictions. He also has extensive trial experience in both federal and state courts, as well as before arbitration panels.
In the 1990s, Michael represented a Fortune 500 chemical company in “bet-the-company” litigation involving product liability cases pending throughout the United States. He was a lead attorney in two nationwide class actions and a nine-month arbitration that successfully resolved those actions. In 2001, Michael successfully tried an action to judgment for that same company arising out of the failure of an acrylic acid reactor in Clearlake, Texas.
Beginning in 2001, Michael represented a German bank in numerous matters, including in an action where he obtained a judgment for that bank against a group of sureties that had guaranteed finite reinsurance transactions. He also represented the German bank, and several other clients, in the Enron bankruptcy and during the Enron examiner’s investigation. Michael was involved in some of the biggest bankruptcies of the 2000s: Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Lyondell and Lehman. Michael also has extensive experience with litigation involving various structured financial products, including CDOs, CLOs, credit default swaps, leveraged agency and derivative domestic and foreign investments.
Michael has also represented trustees in residential mortgage-backed securities put-back litigation against loan originators and securitization sponsors. In June 2014, Michael defeated a motion to dismiss in four separate put-back actions in a single decision that has become a standard in New York’s commercial courts.
