Dewey & LeBoeuf Partners Held Not Personally Liable for Lease Payments Following Bankruptcy

Schulte represented 170 former partners of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP in a victory in a major lawsuit brought by a past landlord for over $200 million. The Supreme Court, New York County ruled on April 1, 2016 that the former partners could not be held personally liable for payments under a lease signed by the firm’s predecessors, long before Dewey & LeBoeuf’s bankruptcy.

In 2007, two major New York law firms, LeBoeuf Lamb Green & McRae LLP and Dewey Ballantine LLP, merged their practices under the umbrella of LeBoeuf Lamb, which changed its name to Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. The firm took residence at Dewey Ballantine LLP’s old offices and assumed Dewey Ballantine LLP's lease, which was originally signed in 1989 by partners of Dewey Ballantine Bushby Palmer & Wood, a general partnership and the predecessor to Dewey Ballantine LLP. After Dewey & LeBoeuf’s highly publicized bankruptcy in 2012, the firm’s landlord sued more than 400 former partners of the two firms in the fall of 2013, alleging that they were jointly and severally liable for all amounts due under the lease.

Granting the defendants’ motion to dismiss the landlord’s complaint, the judge held that because the parties never updated the lease to comply with a state partnership law that allows for personal liability of partners in an LLP only if a majority of partners agree, the former partners were not liable for the unpaid lease payments following the bankruptcy and termination of the lease.

The Schulte team representing the former Dewey & LeBoeuf partners was led by litigation partner and co-chair of the firm’s Litigation Group Robert M. Abrahams.