MARTIN GARBUS
Partner, Litigation
www.martingarbus.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Garbus

Martin Garbus, a partner in the law firm of Davis & Gilbert LLP, is one of the country’s leading trial lawyers.  He aggressively represents his commercial and criminal clients in both the courts and the public media.  He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court as well as the highest state and federal courts in the nation.

Time Magazine has named him “legendary, one of the best trial lawyers in the country,” while Newsweek, the National Law Journal and other media agree that Mr. Garbus is America’s “most prominent First Amendment lawyer” with an “extraordinarily diverse practice.”  His peers and “Super Lawyers” have voted him one of the five best trial lawyers in America.  New York Magazine, for the last eleven years, named him both as one of America’s best trial lawyers, and one of America’s best Intellectual Property lawyers.  Los Angeles Magazine has done the same.  The National Law Journal named him one of the country’s top ten litigators. 

Mr. Garbus has earned his distinguished reputation as a result of his courtroom skills.  He is an expert at every aspect of trial, from jury selection to cross-examination to summation.  His cases have established new legal precedents in the Supreme Court and courts throughout the country.

Mr. Garbus, who taught trial practice at the Yale Law School and Constitutional law at Columbia, is the author of six books and numerous articles, that have appeared both in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and in legal publications.  He has given hundreds of talks on various aspects of law before Bar Associations, corporations, law schools and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and other television and radio networks.  His devotion to ethics, justice and the law has garnered respect among the legal community and beyond, earning him numerous honors, designations in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Best Lawyers in America as well as awards from his law school and college.

Several notable examples highlighting Martin Garbus’s practice are described below:

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

• In a 5-4 decision reached by the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Garbus won what is arguably the most important due process case of the 20th century, Goldberg v. Kelly (397 U.S. 254).
• Arguing in the United States Supreme Court after a trial in Alabama, Mr. Garbus won in King v. Smith (392 U.S. 309), a unanimous 9-0 decision striking down laws in 14 states on the grounds they violated the Constitution.  These laws had disenfranchised one million people.
• Served as co-counsel in Ashton v. Kentucky (384 U.S. 195), a Supreme Court decision that struck down all criminal libel laws in the United States.
• Served as co-counsel in Jacobellis v. Ohio (378 U.S. 184), where the Supreme Court held unconstitutional an Ohio statute seeking to regulate motion pictures and, for the first time, defined the term “national community standards.”

LIBEL, DEFAMATION AND OTHER FIRST AMENDMENT CASES

• Successfully represented famed comedian Lenny Bruce against criminal charges.
• Successfully represented best-selling writer Robert Sam Anson in a lawsuit claiming Walt Disney tried to stop publication of a book critical of the company.
• Successfully represented, in a Federal court and then before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals sitting in New York, Penguin Books against attempts by Lawrence Walsh, Special Counsel to Iran-Contra, to stop the publication of Jeffrey Toobin’s book on Iran-Contra.
• In a Chicago state court, and then in the Supreme Court of Illinois, successfully stopped the unauthorized publication of a book of short stories of author John Cheever.
• In a Los Angeles, California federal court, and then in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, successfully represented actor/director Spike Lee in an injunction suit filed to prevent the release of “Malcolm X”.
• Successfully defended the author Terry McMillan in a New York State court against libel allegations.
• Representing Penguin, successfully set new precedent on behalf of all authors in establishing that libel did not lie in the fiction area.
• Successfully defended Scholastic Books, the publisher of the “Harry Potter” series, against claims that some others than Rowling wrote the best-selling books.
• Successfully defended Time Warner, Random House, Penguin, Putnam and Bantam Books on numerous libel claims in New York, Arkansas, Ohio, Wyoming and California.
• In South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska, and before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in Minnesota, successfully defended Peter Matthiessen and Penguin Books in federal suits filed by William Janklow, South Dakota Governor and Senator, and the FBI over allegations that the FBI wrongfully coerced testimony through physical abuse and that Janklow had raped an Indian woman.

GOVERNMENT ACTIONS

During his legal career, Mr. Garbus has represented and advocated on behalf of political dissidents such as Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, and Daniel Ellsberg.  On behalf of Andrei Sakharov and other Russian dissidents, he smuggled a list of political prisoners describing their awful jail conditions, out of the Soviet Union, personally delivering it in January 1980, two weeks before the inauguration, to then-President Jimmy Carter, who acknowledged this document as the beginning and cornerstone of his new American human rights policy.  He has also been an international observer in trials and elections in South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Rwanda, Russia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, COPYRIGHT

• Won a copyright suit against the Coors Brewing Company on behalf of Public Enemy No. 1, a hip-hop and rap group, for wrongful sampling the group’s music in beer advertisements.
• Represented Miramax Co when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) tried to rate several of its films “R,” and on behalf of Miramax, brought a lawsuit to declare unconstitutional the MPAA’s film ratings system.
• Won a federal jury verdict representing the Isley Brothers against Motown Records involving accounting fraud and copyright infringement and had it upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
• Successfully defended a trustee of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance in a copyright infringement case involving choreographed material.
• Won a trial in Mississippi Federal Court on behalf of Britain’s Channel 4 and the Public Broadcasting System involving breach of contract claims and the unauthorized use of photographs in a PBS-Channel 13 film on art in America and had the decision upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana.
• Represented the Public Broadcasting System in copyright and criminal suits in the United States.
• Represented renowned artist Agnes Martin in lawsuits regarding ownership of her paintings and in her estate.

CELEBRITIES AND MEDIA CLIENTS

Mr. Garbus’ diverse practice consists of individuals and companies involved in media, entertainment and the arts.  His clients include:

Authors
David Halberstam, Philip Roth, Tom Brokaw, Amy Tan, Terry McMillan, Peter Matthiessen, Nancy Reagan, and Alger Hiss.

Actors, Playwrights, Directors, & Producers
Al Pacino, Lauren Bacall, Martin Lawrence, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Richard Gere, Robert Redford, Penny Marshall, Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Garry Marshall, Sidney Lumet, Samuel Beckett, Peter Stone.

Publishers
Penguin-Putnam Books, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Random House, Alfred A. Knopf, Pantheon, Ballantine Books, Grove Press and Scholastic Books.

Artists, Photographers & Galleries
Agnes Martin, Tom Wesselman, Sally Mann, Bert Stern, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank and The Pace Gallery.

Motion Picture Studios, Media & Corporate Entities
Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Miramax, LucasFilms, Paramount, Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg, L.P.

The following are among the many litigations involving high-profile individuals that Mr. Garbus has handled:

• Successful defense of Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of the City of New York, against Rupert Murdoch.
• Successful defense of actor Richard Gere against criminal assault charges.
• Successful defense of Donald Trump against libel charges.
• Successfully represented Richard Avedon, renowned photographer, against invasion of privacy claims.
• Successfully represented Robert Redford in a false advertising suit against the Lorillard Tobacco Company.
• Successfully represented LucasFilms in its book negotiations for “Star Wars.

CLASS ACTIONS

• Successfully represented plaintiffs and defendants in class action suits in New York and Texas.
• Presently represents American Airlines employees in a one billion dollar suit against the airline.
• In a four-month long class action securities fraud suit, Mr. Garbus successfully represented plaintiffs against one of America’s largest corporations.

ANTITRUST

• Successfully represented independent movie houses in their suit against several motion picture studios over preferential treatment given to movie chains.
• Successfully represented book publishers charged with antitrust violations, including price fixing and monopoly.

THE INTERNET

In 1998, Mr. Garbus began representing individuals and companies in Internet litigation.  Pioneering the legal future of the digital age, he represented the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Source Movement in the first copyright case to be tried under the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  That landmark case, involving the motion picture industry and the MPAA, became the battleground where First Amendment and copyright values clashed, permanently affecting the art, movie, music and DVD industry, including the rights of MP3 and iPOD owners.  It helped lead to changes in the way music and movies are sold.  He also successfully represented Internet defendants, including AOL, in copyright, libel and criminal suits.

ESTATE MATTERS AND PROTECTION OF PERSONAL WEALTH

Mr. Garbus’ passion for protecting his clients, and their hard-earned assets, is widely known.

• He has tried numerous complex estate cases in New York and been appointed to serve as lawyer and/or executor and/or trustee of numerous estates, including those of Marilyn Monroe, Igor Stravinsky, John Cheever and Margaret Mitchell.
• Successfully represented the Stravinsky estate in a preceding-setting suit interpreting the late author’s will and the disposition of hundreds of millions of dollars of royalties.
• Represented the Mitchell Estate in a case involving a parody of the novel, “Gone With the Wind.”
• Successfully represented Grove Press and Pia Pera, author of “Lo’s Diary,” in a suit brought by the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov to block publication of her novel.
• Successfully represented, in a Los Angeles federal court, well-known Hollywood personalities defrauded of hundreds of millions of dollars by business managers and agents.
• Represented in New York and New Mexico two substantial estates involving control and value over significant works of art.
• Represented art donors in valuation proceedings before the IRS and in tax court.
• Represented Lloyds of London in the Supreme Court, New York County, on breach of contract claims by Russian oligarchs, and in California and Texas on breach of contract claims.

PERSONAL INJURY

• Won a jury award in a personal injury suit in 1982 against American Airlines of $26,000,000, one of the largest awards granted at that time.  He has tried dozens of cases representing plaintiffs where the awards exceed $1,000,000.

CRIMINAL

• Mr. Garbus has defended criminal cases across the country.  In Nebraska and South Dakota, he successfully represented Wounded Knee murder defendants, a leading scientist against a claim by one of America’s largest corporations that he stole secret computer codes, white-collar defendants, defendants in military court martial cases against various charges, as well as 14 cases of murder in New York.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC LAW

ADDITIONAL AREAS OF LAW

CIVIL RIGHTS

ON THE PRESENT DOCKET OF MARTIN GARBUS

Notable among the many cases Mr. Garbus is currently handling are the following:

Mr. Garbus has testified before the United States Congress and the New York and California legislative branches many times on many issues as well as before numerous federal and state agencies.

He has lectured in the United States, England, China, South Africa and Czechoslovakia on legal matters before governmental bodies, private groups and law schools, and has litigated commercial matters, as co-counsel, in numerous foreign countries including France, Germany and England.  He has been a consultant to many governments, including Russia, China, Czechoslovakia and Rwanda in their creation of new constitutions and laws.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES AND AFFILIATIONS
Member, Communications and Media Law Committee, The Association of the Bar of the City of New York

EDUCATION
Columbia University, Master's Degree Candidate in Economics
New York University School of Law, J.D.
New York University, LLM Candidate in Tax Law
New School of Social Research, Master's Degree Candidate in English
NYU Alumni Achievement Award
Hunter College, B.A.
Hunter College Hall of Fame
Hunter Alumni Achievement Award

CONTACT
212-468-4883
mgarbus@dglaw.com