Adam Leitman Bailey represents owners at 20 Pine (left) and Stephen Ross (top right) is locked in an ILSA dispute with buyer Vasilis Bacolitsas (bottom right)

From the December issue: Not everyone has the stomach for a lawsuit — taking an otherwise private disagreement into the public realm and submitting it to the cool evaluation of the court.

But sometimes situations are untenable, and parties consider judicial intervention the only recourse. The resulting lawsuits can have a broad impact, reaching beyond the businesses involved to encompass the industry as a whole.

Consider the condominium contract dispute that could affect the way New York City developers handle purchase agreements for new condos. Or the suit between residential brokers whose failed alliance could become fodder for a jury trial. Or a federal agency’s offensive against a slew of major banks over mortgage-backed securities.  [more]

From the September issue: In 2009, the landscape was bleak for New York City real estate lawyers.
Many of the big firms tried shifting people between departments to deal with the slowdown in real estate business caused by the economic downturn. Then, they let people go through attrition, and even outright layoffs. But it still wasn’t enough, lawyers said.
“When we were at our smallest, we still weren’t as busy as we’d like to be,” said Robert Ivanhoe, chairman of the New York office and the global real estate practice at Greenberg Traurig. “Even after the downsizing, we weren’t at capacity.”
Ivanhoe, though, was happy to be speaking in the past tense. In the last six months, he said, Greenberg Traurig’s New York real estate practice has increasingly focused on transactions, rather than the debt restructuring work that his and other firms fell back on to keep busy in the lean years.
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Joseph Cayre and 452 Fifth Avenue (building photo source: PropertyShark)

The first major non-distressed office building sale Manhattan has seen in two years closed Tuesday, according to Globe St., with the $350 million sale-leaseback of the HSBC tower at 452 Fifth Avenue between 39th and 40th streets. The purchase was made by a special purpose vehicle known as 452 Fifth Owners LLC, which includes Joseph Cayre’s Midtown Holdings, Israeli-based Koor Industries, and Property and Building Ltd. Carl Schwartz, chair of law firm Herrick Feinstein’s commercial real estate department, said that the deal is a good omen for the market. “This transaction would be notable in any market, but represents a particularly good sign in light of the real estate world of 2010,” Schwartz said. “My sense is that there are lenders out there who want to put money out for the right deal.”