Michael focuses his practice on complex litigation, including class actions, multidistrict litigation, and arbitrations. Michael has extensive experience with antitrust litigation, securities litigation, defamation and cases arising out of mergers and acquisitions. Michael also counsels clients on defamation, media and acquisition-related issues.
Recent matters Michael has handled include defending AIG in antitrust cases in a multidistrict litigation, successfully defending Full Tilt Poker and its principals in RICO and consumer class actions filed in multiple jurisdictions in the United States and abroad; winning dismissal for outside directors in a major securities litigation in the Southern District of New York; winning dismissal for individual defendants in false advertising case brought by the FTC; winning dismissals for the United Group of Companies is a series of securities fraud cases in multiple jurisdictions; representing Staples in litigation with the FTC relating to Staples’ proposed merger with Office Depot; and defending the former CFO of a pharmaceutical company in a civil action brought by the SEC. He has also been counsel of record in multiple U.S. Supreme Court cases, representing parties and amici curiae.
Michael is active in bar and civic organizations. He is on the board of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; he served as co-chair of the Antitrust Litigation Committee in the Litigation Section of the ABA; and he is also an elected member and Vice President of the Board of Education in Glen Ridge, N.J.
Michael earned his law degree from Rutgers University School of Law, graduating cum laude and as a member of the order of the coif. He was editor-in-chief of the Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal. He received his bachelor's degree from Montclair State University, majoring in philosophy.
News
September 21, 2018
Super Lawyers has named 17 Cozen O'Connor attorneys to its 2018 New York Super Lawyers and Rising Stars list. Twelve were recognized as Super Lawyers and five were named "Rising Stars."
October 19, 2017
Super Lawyers has named 12 attorneys at Cozen O’Connor to its 2017 lists of top practitioners in the New York metro area. Six were recognized as Super Lawyers and six were named “Rising Stars,” a list that recognizes attorneys under the age of 40.
September 07, 2017
Cozen O’Connor is proud to announce the promotion of six members to shareholders of the firm: David Brisco (San Diego), Michael de Leeuw (New York), John Dickenson (West Palm Beach), Jonathan Lichtenstein (Philadelphia), William Walsh (Seattle), and Ingrid Welch (Philadelphia).
August 30, 2017
Cozen O’Connor, alongside co-counsel NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and New Orleans-based civil rights lawyer Ron Wilson, obtained an important trial victory for our clients—the Terrebonne Parish NAACP and four individual Black voters—in a voting rights case in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.
October 05, 2016
The 2016 New York Metro edition of Super Lawyers Magazine, published by Thomson Reuters, has named 21 Cozen O’Connor attorneys to its list of Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.
October 05, 2015
The 2015 New York Metro edition of Super Lawyers Magazine, published by Thomson Reuters, has named 21 Cozen O’Connor attorneys to its list of Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.
January 02, 2015
In an article titled ''Securities Cases To Watch In 2015,'' Michael de Leeuw, a member of Cozen O’Connor’s Commercial Litigation Department, comments on the closely watched Supreme Court case Omnicare Inc. et al. v. Laborers District Council Construction Industry Pension Fund et al. and the Second Circuit’s recent decision in US v. Newman et al.
September 23, 2014
The 2014 New York Metro edition of Super Lawyers Magazine, published by Thomson Reuters, has named 16 Cozen O’Connor attorneys to its list of Super Lawyers and Rising Stars.
October 15, 2013
Cozen O’Connor continues to increase the depth of the firm’s litigation capabilities in New York with the recent hiring of five new partners. Partners residing in the firm's New York office who have joined in recent months include John J. Sullivan, Michael B. de Leeuw, Patrick B. Sardino, William K. Kirrane and Adam I. Stein.
Publications
April 11, 2018
Michael de Leeuw, a member in the firm's Commercial Litigation Department, authored, " ‘Possession, Custody or Control’—Got It?" for the New York Law Journal.
October 31, 2016
Jonathan Grossman, Thomas Ingalls and Michael de Leeuw, members of Cozen O'Connor's Commercial Litigation department discuss the recent Caledonia matter in the New York Law Journal.
May 13, 2016
Michael de Leeuw and Matthew Elkin, both of Cozen O'Connor's Commercial Litigation department, discuss the business side of Justice Scalia in Corporate Counsel.
February 23, 2015
In an article titled '''Irreparable Harm' Is a Tough Hurdle to Clear,'' Michael de Leeuw and John Sullivan, members of Cozen O'Connor's Commercial Litigation Department, examine the current state of preliminary injunction jurisprudence in New York courts (with liberal reference to their federal counterparts), in particular the treatment of the “irreparable harm” branch of the test, and explore whether there are any better guiding standards that might make preliminary injunction practice more predictable.
July 03, 2014
As the end of the Supreme Court term approached, decisions came down fast and furious. Last week’s big decisions, at least around our nerdish water cooler, were Halliburton and Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer. (Yes, we know that there were major rulings on Obamacare, public unions, buffer zones,...
June 23, 2014
This morning the Supreme Court released its highly-anticipated decision in Hallburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. As we (and, to be fair, others) predicted after the oral argument, the Court did not have the appetite to overturn Basic Inc. v. Levinson (though Justices Thomas, Scalia and Alito...
May 01, 2014
As often happens in the vicinity of courthouse steps, the high-profile Silicon Valley hiring antitrust class-action lawsuit has settled, pending court approval. In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation originally pitted five software engineers as representatives of a broad putative class of...
April 17, 2014
The legal drama continues for Apple, Inc., as the tech giant recently suffered another in a string of significant legal setbacks in the e-book antitrust saga in the Southern District of New York. Last month, Judge Denise Cote granted the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, allowing e-book...
April 07, 2014
History has shown that large class action cases often follow government investigations the way that the lamb followed Mary to school that day. Sometimes, however, those investigations die and Mary gets lost and brings her little lamb to the slaughterhouse.
The Second Circuit recently affirmed...
March 26, 2014
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard the highly-anticipated oral argument in Hallburton Co. v. Erica P. John Fund, Inc. Prior to the argument, there was a growing consensus that the Court was likely going to overturn Basic Inc. v. Levinson (1988), the groundbreaking case that adopted the...
March 18, 2013
The era when a lawyer can competently practice without understanding a client's electronic data is rapidly drawing to a close. New York's Office of Court Administration has recommended amendments to the rules governing preliminary conferences in non-Commercial Division cases that should radically reduce the number of cases where one can stand in front of a judge like Saturday Night Live's fabled unfrozen caveman lawyer, proudly ignorant of electronic discovery issues.
March 19, 2012
More than 10 years ago, at a time when much uncertainty surrounded issues related to electronic documents, the New York State Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics issued one of the first opinions addressing a lawyer’s ethical obligations concerning metadata.
April 18, 2011
All too often in today’s litigation environment, electronic discovery issues turn into expensive deathtraps that threaten to overwhelm the merits of the actual dispute between the parties. But prepared litigants can and should take measures to avoid the “gotcha” pitfalls attendant to e-discovery long before the terabytes have been put through the thresher.
November 15, 2010
The costs associated with the discovery of electronically stored information (ESI) continue to increase at rates unknown outside of the healthcare industry. While much of the discussion regarding costs centers on those associated with accessing, reviewing and producing ESI, an oft-overlooked but (in many cases) significant driver of the high price of discovery are the costs associated with preserving ESI.
March 22, 2010
At this point in the discovery revolution, there is no question that savvy litigants have become sensitive to the need to preserve documents and, particularly, electronically stored information (ESI). While the cost of even marginal preservation steps can be quite high, the failure to act promptly can lead to the unintentional loss of documents (through the recycling of disaster recovery backups or the operation of automatic deletion routines in e-mail mailboxes) and unpleasant litigation consequences.
December 18, 2009
Much has been written about the Second Circuit’s decision (by a panel that included now-Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor) to affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the City of New Haven in Ricci v. DeStefano. Ricci was subsequently reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court and became a major topic of discussion during Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. Commentators and senators cited Judge Jose Cabranes’ forceful dissent from the Second Circuit’s decision not to grant a rehearing en banc, particularly his comment that the case raised “novel questions of constitutional and statutory law” that the Second Circuit’s decision had “failed to grapple with.”
July 07, 2009
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller held that a municipal ban on handguns is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, but left open the possibility of reasonable regulations on firearms. Given the outrageous levels of firearms-related violence in many urban areas—violence that disproportionately affects communities of color—the question of what constitutes a reasonable regulation should be an issue of major concern to civil rights activists and lawyers. This
article evaluates Heller in light of these issues, and argues in favor of a general presumption that local legislatures are best situated to balance the costs and benefits of firearms regulations. Moving forward, municipalities should be afforded broad discretion in enacting such regulations, consistent with the Court’s decision in Heller.
March 24, 2009
The topic of climate change has become a significant public policy issue that has generated substantial discussion, controversy and debate. Recently, Steven Napolitano and Lincoln Wilson published an arresting article in Environmental Law 360 called “Why Climate Suits May not be ‘Next Big Thing.’”
August 06, 2008
While much commentary has been devoted to the groundbreaking holding of D.C. v. Heller — that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to "keep and bear Arms" for purely private purposes — too little attention has been paid to what the court did not decide and the significant uncertainties that remain in Second Amendment jurisprudence.
May 19, 2008
While the collection, review and production of e-mails and other electronic documents have become routine for U.S. companies involved in civil litigation, internal investigations, and various other legal matters, there is an increasing number of cases that involve foreign or multinational clients, and the collection and production of electronic documents from these clients can be anything but routine.
March 19, 2008
A federal district court judge in the Western District of Washington recently dismissed an antitrust class action suit alleging that two private equity funds had unlawfully conspired in their bid to acquire WatchGuard Technologies (“WatchGuard”), a publicly traded company. Pennsylvania Avenue Funds v. Borey, Number C06-1737RAJ (W.D. Wash. Feb. 21, 2008).
November 05, 2007
By now, most litigators have come to grips with e-mail and its many problems. We know that the ubiquity and shear volume of e-mail have changed civil discovery forever. We have all become familiar with our clients’ e-mail systems and their policies and procedures for the use and maintenance of e-mail. At the outset of a case we seemingly now spend more time with IT professionals than with in-house counsel, and we all know that it is important how often and when email servers are backed up and where files are stored. What many of us and our clients do not know (or are only learning now) is that millions of employees have been sending millions of messages to each other and to third parties each day—messages that completely circumvent all of the policies, processes and procedures that have diligently been put in place to control the e-mail monster.
February 05, 2007
A friend who recently made partner at a large New York firm described the experience perfectly: After nine years of hard work and after an almost unbearable year and a half of backdoor politics, rumors, innuendo and insomnia, he received the long-awaited news that he had made the grade.
December 04, 2006
There are few things more vexing to litigators than adverse parties who—despite the issuance of a court order—simply refuse to comply with their obligations under the law. Whether it is a discovery order mandating disclosure of certain documents or an injunction prohibiting the adverse party from engaging in specified conduct, we have all experienced the frustration of attempting to enforce court orders against recalcitrant or obstreperous adverse parties who flout such orders even under the threat of a possible contempt motion.
April 03, 2006
Michael B. de Leeuw co-authored this article for the New York Law Journal on why it is necessary to clarify ambiguous terms in commercial agreements.
February 29, 2004
The first United States federal law placing restrictions on the use of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), or 'spam', went into effect on 1 January 2004. While it is early days yet, the reactions of both anti-spam activists, and of spammers, to the new provision, known as the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 ('CAN-SPAM' or the 'Act'), suggests that the Act is unlikely to have much effect in stemming the rising tide of spam messages (many originating from US spam gangs) that is clogging mailboxes the world over. Some of the apparent weaknesses of CAN-SPAM as an effective tool to thwart spam may arise from dubious drafting decisions, and some may be reflective of endemic shortcoming of any attempts to control spam by national legislation, given the inherent fluidity and anonymity of e-mail distribution through the Internet.
January 01, 2004
The authors of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 (hereinafter, "CAN-SPAM" or the "Act"),' the first United States federal law placing restrictions on the use of unsolicited commercial e-mail ("UCE"), or "spam," were asking for trouble. First, the title of the Act rings of Orwellian doublespeak. Second, its content has drawn ire from all sides except, for the most part, the direct marketers who are the ones being regulated - and that is not a good sign.