Kasowitz, Benson & Torres is a New York law firm founded in 1993. It employs 350 lawyers and maintains offices in several states. The firm focuses on product liability

litigation A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. ...

, corporate, family and employment law, as well as

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

, bankruptcy and

creditors' rights A creditor or lender is a party (e.g., person, organization, company, or government) that has a claim on the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some property ...

. The firm's notable clients have included

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

Robert De Niro Robert Anthony De Niro ( , ; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director, and film producer. He is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of his generation. De Niro is the recipient of List of awards and ...

Celanese Celanese Corporation, formerly known as Hoechst Celanese, is an American technology and specialty materials company headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is a Fortune 500 corporation. The company is the world's leading producer of acetic acid, pr ...

, ArvinMeritor,

Liggett Group Liggett Group ( ), now JTI Ligget, formerly known as Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, is the fourth largest tobacco company in the United States. As of 2014, Liggett Group was the fourth largest American tobacco company by gross revenue, though ...

Enron Enron Corporation was an American Energy development, energy, Commodity, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was led by Kenneth Lay and developed in 1985 via a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both re ...

WorldCom MCI, Inc. (formerly WorldCom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second-largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunicatio ...

and

Mia Farrow Maria de Lourdes Villiers "Mia" Farrow ( ; born February 9, 1945) is an American actress. She first gained notice for her role as Allison MacKenzie in the television soap opera ''Peyton Place (TV series), Peyton Place'' and gained further recogn ...

History

Founding

The firm was founded as Kasowitz, Hoff, Benson & Torres in 1993 when Marc Kasowitz left the

Mayer Brown Mayer Brown is a global white-shoe law firm, founded in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It has offices in 27 cities throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, with its largest offices being in Chicago, Washington, D.C., New ...

law firm with 18 other lawyers and two clients.

David M. Friedman David Melech Friedman (born August 8, 1958) is an American bankruptcy lawyer and the former United States Ambassador to Israel. He joined the law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman (then known as Kasowitz, Hoff, Benson & Torres) in 1994, ...

joined in 1994 and became a name partner in May 1995 and the firm was renamed Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. William Bruce Hoff, Jr. left in November 1996.

Expansion

The firm began in New York City with 18 lawyers and after 6 months expanded to include a Houston branch office. Friedman joined the firm in 1993 or 1994 and opened its bankruptcy practice. In 1996 several new lawyers joined the firm to begin its employment and matrimonial practices. It opened a New Jersey office in 1997, Atlanta in 2001 and in 2003 the firm opened a San Francisco office while former assistant

district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, county prosecutor, state attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or solicitor is the chief prosecutor or chief law enforcement officer represen ...

Leslie Crocker Snyder Leslie Crocker Snyder (born 1942) is an American lawyer and former judge, most notable for her work writing and instituting the original rape shield laws in the state of New York. A pioneer in her field, she was the first women to try a homicid ...

, joined the office in New York. By 2004 the firm had increased to 160 lawyers and included an additional office in Atlanta. The firm opened its Miami, Florida office in 2006 and expanded its San Francisco, California office in 2007 by merging with the seven lawyer firm, Topel & Goodman. The 2005 launch of the intellectual property arm of the company led to several personnel changes with various key lawyers arriving and departing. This included Peter J. Toren who left the intellectual property department in the spring of 2007. In 2009 the firm hired Marcos Daniel Jimenez, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, to lead its Miami, Florida officeRaymond, Nate (September 13, 2013).
Kasowitz Holds Power Close As He Grows Firm, Lures Business
. ''

New York Law Journal The ''New York Law Journal'', founded in 1888, is a legal periodical covering the legal profession in New York, United States. Background The newspaper, published Monday through Friday, provides daily coverage of civil and criminal cases from ...

''. Accessed June 27, 2014. and added insurance recovery litigation to its practice. In January 2010 the company added Robin Cohen and her insurance team from the firm, Dickstein Shapiro. In November 2012 the firm opened an additional office in Silicon Valley. They opened a Los Angeles, California office in May 2013 led by partners that were lured away from Jenner & Block. In June, former U.S. Senator,

Joe Lieberman Joseph Isadore Lieberman (; February 24, 1942 – March 27, 2024) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. Originally a member of the Democratic Party (United States), Dem ...

, joined the firm as Senior Counsel and his former Senate Chief of Staff, Clarine Nardi Riddle launched a Government Affairs branch of the company in Washington D.C. In October, two senior litigation attorneys from

NBC Universal NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is a subsidiary of Comcast and headquartered at 30 ...

joined the firm's Los Angeles office to begin an entertainment litigation practice. In 2014, following the resolution of several large cases, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman laid off approximately 30 of its 350 attorneys. In 2014, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman was ranked as the 119th largest firm in the United States by

Law360 Law360 is a subscription-based, legal news service based in New York City. It is operated by Portfolio Media, Inc., a subsidiary of LexisNexisSabroski, Suzxanne (May 1, 2012) LexisNexis goes 360, ''Onliline'' and delivers breaking news and analys ...

. In June, the firm was awarded the Chambers USA 2014 Award for Excellence.

Notable clients and cases

In 2003 the firm successfully opposed a chemical company called Celanese and won an asbestos lawsuit involving the auto parts supplier, ArvinMeritor. They also overturned a $799 million punitive damages award levied against the Liggett cigarette company. In 2004 the company received the "largest toxic tort settlement in U.S. history" in a case involving one of

Monsanto The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best-known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed ...

's company plants in Alabama. By 2005 the firm had participated in the bankruptcy cases of Enron, WorldCom,

Global Crossing Global Crossing Limited was a telecommunications company that provided computer networking services and operated a tier 1 carrier. It maintained a large backbone network and offered peering, virtual private networks, leased lines, audio and vid ...

and

Adelphia Communications Adelphia Communications Corporation was an American cable television company with headquarters in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1952 by brothers Gus and John Rigas after the pair purchased a cable television franchise for US$300. C ...

and the matrimonial proceedings for Robert De Niro,

Donna Hanover Donna Hanover (born Donna Ann Kofnovec; February 15, 1950) is an American journalist, radio and television personality, television producer, and actress, who appears on CUNY TV in New York City. From 1994 through 2001, she was First Lady of New ...

and Mia Farrow. The firm has represented

since 2001. In January 2006, the firm filed a defamation lawsuit (dismissed in 2009) on behalf of Donald Trump against the author and publisher of '' TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald''. In 2010 the firm's clients included

Fortress Investment Group Fortress Investment Group, LLC is an American investment management firm based in New York City. It was founded as a private equity firm in 1998 by Wes Edens, Rob Kauffman, Pete Briger, Michael Novogratz, and Randal Nardone. Overview When ...

MBIA MBIA Inc. is an American financial services company. It was founded in 1973 as the Municipal Bond Insurance Association. It is headquartered in Purchase, New York, and as of January 1, 2015 had approximately 180 employees. MBIA is the largest b ...

and Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. In 2016, the firm represented Harold Peerenboom of Toronto in an extended legal fight with his seasonal

Palm Beach, Florida Palm Beach is an incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. Located on a barrier island in east-central Palm Beach County, the town is separated from West Palm Beach, Florida, West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach, Florida, ...

, neighbor, businessman

Isaac Perlmutter Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter (; born December 1, 1945) is an Israeli-American billionaire businessman and financier. Through a variety of sometimes unorthodox business deals, he has been an influential investor in a number of corporations, including R ...

. In 2017, the firm had recently added the Russian

Sberbank The Public JSC Sberbank (, initially a contraction of ) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. As the Russian successor entity of the State Labor Savings Banks System of the USSR, it was ...

"in a case that accused it of conspiring to take over a Russian granite company". In 2020, the firm registered as a foreign agent with the US Department of Justice after representing Kiryat Sefer, an Israeli real estate developer that built the first neighborhood of the

Modi'in Illit Modi'in Illit (; , lit. "Upper Modi'in") is a Haredi Judaism, Haredi Jewish-Israeli settlement organized as a city council (Israel), city council in the West Bank, situated midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Built on the land of five Palest ...

settlement.

Administration

The firm's main administration consists of the partners, Marc Kasowitz, Daniel Benson, Hector Torres and David Friedman and its executive committee consists of Kasowitz, Benson and Torres. The company's average per partner profit was $2.9 million in 2004 and $2.1 million in 2009. According to a 2004 article in American Lawyer the firm had a "diverse culture" featuring an exceptional number of young lawyers but fewer than the average number of women and minority employees. In contrast, a 2014 a report by American Lawyer ranked the firms cultural diversity as 59th out of the 223 firms they evaluated.

Controversy

In September 2007 the firm was dismissed by its client,

Biovail Corporation Biovail Corporation was a Canadian pharmaceutical company, operating internationally in all aspects of pharmaceutical products. Its major production facility was located in Steinbach, Manitoba. It merged with Valeant Pharmaceuticals Internatio ...

after a Southern District Judge found Biovail Corp. had used legal documents in violation of a protection order. The law firm denied knowledge of the protective order and was later rehired by Biovail. In December 2007, one of the firm's partners, Jeremy Pitcock, was fired for "extremely inappropriate personal conduct." Pitcock sued the firm for wrongful firing and defamation and the firm countered with a suit claiming Pitcock sexually harassed 12 female employees. A panel of the Appellate Division, dismissed both suits. A former associate filed a lawsuit against the firm in August 2011 alleging negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and wrongful termination. The suit's 2012 dismissal was upheld upon appeal. In October 2018, the firm was at the center of a fiery exchange between then-Senator

Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female, first African American, and ...

and then-US

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

nominee

Brett Kavanaugh Brett Michael Kavanaugh (; born February 12, 1965) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since Oct ...

during his Senate hearing. Harris questioned Kavanaugh on whether he had spoken to any individuals employed at the firm about the ongoing

Mueller investigation The Robert Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into 45th U.S. president Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 20 ...

, which at the time President

Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

was a personal client of the firm. It ultimately resulted in an unclear answer from Kavanaugh with lawmakers in the chamber struck at partisan odds over the appropriateness of the posed question.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kasowitz, Benson, Torres and Friedman Law firms established in 1993 Law firms based in New York City