Michael Stein

Practice Areas

Appellate Advocacy

Litigation

Local Counsel

Attorney Ethics & Professional Misconduct

Business Divorce & Ownership Disputes

Trusts, Estates & Fiduciary Litigation

Career

Michael S. Stein is the firm’s chair and managing partner. He specializes in general commercial litigation, chancery litigation, legal ethics, and appellate advocacy. He has substantial trial and appellate experience in both state and federal courts, concentrating his practice primarily on complex and sophisticated corporate, business and probate disputes. He also serves as an advisor to the firm’s corporate clients on a wide variety of matters, including partnership and shareholder disputes, intellectual property rights, antitrust matters, professional malpractice, chancery litigation, legal ethics, land use and restrictive covenants.

Clients come to Mike for matters big and small, knowing that he will roll up his sleeves, sweat the details, always make himself available to offer careful and thoughtful counsel from beginning to end, and be fully prepared to aggressively try the case should settlement efforts prove unsuccessful. In addition, Mike is routinely engaged as counsel and local counsel by major multinational AmLaw 100 firms to meet their regional litigation needs. The combination of Mike’s years of experience, his work ethic, his knowledge of New Jersey’s judicial culture, and, most importantly, the depth and strength of the Firm’s litigation bench, puts him at the forefront of our state litigation bar and makes him one of the go-to litigators in New Jersey for major “bet the business” litigations.

Professional Memberships

Member, Editorial Board, New Jersey Law Journal

Member, Vineyard Power Cooperative’s Advisory Committee

Past Member, Professional Responsibility Rules Committee

Past Member, Civil Practice Rules Committee

Past Chair, District II-B Ethics Committee

Supreme Court Approved Mediator

Past Chair and Member, Montclair Cooperative School, Board of Trustees

Expert in these Jurisdictions

BAR ADMISSIONS

New Jersey

COURT ADMISSIONS

U.S. Supreme Court

U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit

U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey

U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York

Experience

Featured in New Jersey Law Journal’s year-in-review “Winners” of 2021, Stein represented an attorney facing ethics charges for allegedly instructing a paralegal to send a Facebook friend request to a represented adversary to obtain evidence for a personal injury litigation. After 10+ years of proceedings, the New Jersey Supreme Court dismissed the disciplinary charges against our client.

Successfully defended a group of physicians in a business tort case in which the plaintiff was seeking $26 million in actual damages, plus punitive damages, for a total of more than $150 million. Shortly after being retained in July 2016—nearly seven years after the litigation began—PSWH advanced unaddressed dispositive issues and coordinated a carefully choreographed series of motions that resulted in an adjournment of the upcoming trial date, and later, the dismissal of the entire case. In 2019, the Appellate Division largely affirmed, but remanded for a trial on claims valued in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual damages. After the New Jersey Supreme Court declined the plaintiff’s petition for certification, the case returned to trial court. The case settled on confidential terms hours after Mr. Stein presented his opening statement live to the jury.

Retained in 2017 by our client, the liquidating trustee in bankruptcy, after the trial court dismissed claims of the successor-in-interest to the company in bankruptcy, PSWH secured a significant win in a complex, cross-border dispute in December 2021, when the Appellate Division reversed the trial court’s grant of summary judgement on claims worth more than $200 million and remanded the matter for trial. Following the denial of certification, the case returned to the trial court and quickly settled.

Represented a leading heart valve manufacturer in a patent licensing dispute involving rights to a minimally invasive method for repairing and replacing aortic heart valves (transcatheter aortic valve replacement therapy).The dispute focused on whether only a particular patent or an entire family of patents to the revolutionary heart valve device and procedure had been licensed. Following an evidentiary hearing on our application for summary judgment, the matter was resolved through a confidential settlement.

Represented shareholders in major New Jersey company involving an internal shareholder dispute among the stakeholders alleging shareholder oppression, conspiracy, single enterprise theory, and attendant valuation disputes. Much of the hard-fought litigation took place up front with Orders to Show Cause and an application for temporary restraints. Our attorneys front-loaded litigation efforts with extensive fact-gathering, research and briefing on complex issues of oppression that effectively gutted plaintiff’s most valuable claim in the case. The matter was ultimately resolved through private mediation.

Representing the plaintiff in an oppressed minority shareholder suit concerning issues of oppression in a closely held corporation. This case resulted in the New Jersey Supreme Court issuing a precedential decision clarifying the State's oppressed shareholders jurisprudence and provided needed guidance on the question of the proofs necessary to trigger the availability of remedies under the oppressed shareholder statute. The case was remanded and appealed following the entry of a $25 million judgment in our client’s favor on remand. In a second Supreme Court decision, which also created new law on the applicability of a marketability discount in the context of a court ordered buy out of interests in closely held corporations, the Court reinstated in full the judgment of $25 million (an $18 million buyout and plus more than $7 million in pre- and post-judgment interest). In post-judgment enforcement proceedings, assisted in collecting more than $23.9 million through various execution avenues from both individual and corporate judgment debtors. Successfully tried a fraudulent transfer claim, resulting in an opinion and order requiring the return of $18 million in funds secreted overseas.

Past successes are not a guarantee of results in any other pending or future matters.

Education

Awards