The Firm’s Original “War
Room” On West 17th Street
After the historic settlement of Wal-Mart et al v. Visa and MasterCard in 2003, Mr. Shapiro continued to counsel clients and co-counsel litigations while serving on the advisory boards of a number of start-up companies. He also served as outside general counsel or in-house counsel and chief compliance officer for two different groups of FinTech (financial services) companies that provided businesses with payment processing services and alternative funding to businesses in the form of merchant cash advances and for an electronic medical records software company. He has lectured at numerous conferences and seminars on a variety of issues, including class actions, complex commercial litigation, payment systems and strategies to respond to a data security breach, and has served as an author or contributing editor of a number of publications and articles.
From 2004-2011, Mr. Shapiro counseled clients on antitrust, litigation and electronic payment systems matters and represented themin complex commercial litigations as a solo-practitioner and co-counseling with other law firms. These clients included Elmhurst Dairy, Steuben Foods, former adversary MasterCard International, a consortium of automobile dealerships who sued Newsday over fraudulent advertising circulation figures and an attempt to monopolize the Long Island advertising market for automobiles and a group of affiliated financial services companies that were also large independent sales offices for major credit card processors. In order to support his existing clients and ongoing matters, Mr. Shapiro expanded the Firm to add more than twenty lawyers, law clerks and paralegals and opened an office in NYC the Fall of 2011 (pictured above), subletting from the affiliated group of financial services clients. In 2011, a jury trial settled midway through Mr. Shapiro’s cross-examination of the plaintiff, and in February 2012, Mr. Shapiro settled an adversary proceeding on behalf of an ISO-creditor of a debtor the night before trial (the culmination of a two year old dispute that began when Mr. Shapiro and his colleagues had successfully sought a TRO in New York State Court compelling the debtor’s continuing payment of its obligations under the contract in question four months before the filing of the Petition in Bankruptcy that automatically stayed the State Court proceeding). After settling the Cynergy Data bankruptcy proceeding on the eve of trial (February 1, 2012), the entire trial team remained intact for quite some time, handling dozens of different matters, including the litigations entitled Business Payment Systems v. National Processing Company, et al (Fifth Third Merchant Processing/Vantiv] in the Federal District Court located in Louisville, Kentucky the Process America Inc. v. Cynergy Data Systems, Inc. case in the Eastern District of New York, and the state court cases of Tribul Merchant Services v. Comvest et al., and Second Source Funding LLC v. Yellowstone Capital.
During the month after the settlement with Cynergy in 2012, the Firm procured a temporary restraining order preventing members of a synagogue from convening meetings or additional rabbinical tribunals for the purpose of interfering with the management and direction of the synagogue by its President of 36 years and otherwise violating an arbitration award of a Beth Din (Rabbinical Court) to which the President had been summoned by those same disgruntled members (Congregation Ahavas Moische, Inc. et al. (a/k/a The Maple Street Synagogue) v. Katzoff et al., Index No. 3895/12 (NY Supreme Court, Kings County)). The very next week, the Firm also procured a TRO preventing a former sales representative and his alleged co-conspirators from continuing to post disparaging or defamatory statements about the Client, or otherwise interfering with the Client’s business in the case of Corona Advance, Inc. et al. v. Yellowstone Capital Inc., et al Index No. 500339/12 (NY Supreme Court, Kings County) and then, that very same week convinced a third court to nullify a TRO that had been precipitously granted against a different client and convinced yet a fourth court to grant a TRO preventing a different client’s failed merger partner and former sales associate from utilizing a misappropriated customer list and other confidential information to unfairly compete in WaterMatic, LLC v. Hochner et al., Index No. 700482/2012 (NY Supreme Court, Queens County). That was just an example of the hard work ethic of the Firm’s lawyers and our ability to achieve multiple successes in a short period of time. During one six month period, the Firm supported Mr. Shapiro as he tried five different cases (one in federal court, three in NY state courts and one in California state court, of which two were jury trials) and handled multiple trial-like evidentiary hearings for four different clients.
Mr. Shapiro spent a considerable amount of his time since 2011 (before and after merging his commercial litigation and counseling practice into a 150-year old midsize Wall Street law firm and serving for two years as a company’s in-house general counsel) representing many different independent sales organizations who were and are litigating multi-million disputes against the major credit card processors (including Cynergy Data/Priority Payment, Pipeline Data, First Data, iPayment, NPC, Fifth Third Processing and Vantiv), merchant cash advance companies and cardholders suing eleven credit card issuers and the major processors after they were defrauded by merchants in a “swipe for points” program that turned into a Ponzi Scheme and bust out. He also litigated numerous cases in other areas, including a billion dollar federal patent antitrust case against Crocs Inc. and its officers and directors, and federal trademark and copyright lawsuits seeking injunctive relief and $22 million in damages on behalf of the original publisher of the discourses and teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, on behalf of themselves and the entire Chabad-Lubavitcher Chasidic Community (Vaad L’Hafotzas Sichos, Inc. et al. v. Kehot Publication Society, a division of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Inc.).
MCShapiro Law Group welcomes traditional and non-traditional billing arrangements with its clients, including contingency, hybrid-contingency and flat fee retainers.
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