Biglaw

Did Disgruntled Partners Lead To The Dewey Prosecution?

Dewey know why the Manhattan DA investigated the financials of the failed firm?

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Dewey LeBoeuf new signAccording to a fascinating new filing in the re-trial of former Dewey & LeBoeuf chief financial officer Joel Sanders and former executive director Stephen DiCarmine, two former Dewey partners put pressure upon the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to look into the financials of the failed firm.

As most in Biglaw circles know, three former Dewey execs went on trial last year for their roles in the demise of the firm. After a mistrial, former Dewey chairman, Steven Davis, signed a deferred prosecution agreement, and Sanders and DiCarmine are staring down the barrel of a second trial, slated to begin in 2017.

It is in the context of this new trial that Sanders’s legal team filed documents suggesting two attorneys pressured the District Attorney’s office to investigate the firm’s finances. The American Lawyer reports the finger gets pointed at former prosecutor, and partner at Baker & Hostetler, John Moscow (who it’s alleged was representing the interests of Carmen MacRae III, formerly senior counsel at Dewey, and partner at LeBoeuf Lamb, which had merged with Dewey), and former Dewey partner, now at Winston & Strawn, Seth Farber.

In court papers, Andrew Frisch, an attorney for Sanders, wrote that the “birth of this case is troubling and should bar the prosecution from alleging that Sanders is to blame for the firm’s demise.
“It has been suggested that the criminal investigation of Mr. Davis in 2012 was pressed by people with unique access to the prosecution,” including Farber and Moscow, added Frisch, a former federal prosecutor and LeClairRyan partner who now runs his own defense firm.
According to Frisch, Moscow, who spent more than 30 years at the Manhattan DA’s office, where he served as chief of the frauds bureau, represented former Dewey & LeBoeuf lawyer Cameron MacRae III, whom Frisch called “disgruntled.”

Farber, Moscow and MacRae all deny they were the driving force behind the prosecution, and Moscow and MacRae further deny they have an attorney/client relationship.

When reached for comment this week, Moscow said he “did not set up a meeting with the district attorney and ask him to prosecute a case.”
Moscow said he learned about the probe of the firm from a newspaper. But he did not deny speaking with people about the investigation of Dewey & LeBoeuf.
“My recollection is that at some point I met with people who were working on the case,” Moscow said, though he declined to identify whom he met with at the time. “My recollection is further that they had been assigned to work on the case before I met them.”
Moscow added that he did not represent MacRae, but he confirmed that they had been in contact and said that they have mutual friends.
“I’m not going to comment on our conversation,” Moscow said. “Nor can I confirm that he called me rather than me calling him.”
For his part, MacRae, now a partner at Duane Morris in New York, said in an email that he “had nothing whatsoever to do with the initiation of the criminal investigation of Messrs. Davis, DiCarmine and Sanders.”
…
As for Farber, Frisch said in court papers that he was a “disgruntled Dewey partner who had previously worked with senior executives of the district attorney’s office to create the annual Dewey award for assistant district attorneys.”
When reached for comment Tuesday, Farber denied the suggestions in Sanders’ memo.
“I can’t speak as to others, but, as to me, that is false,” said the Winston & Strawn litigator in an email.

The allegations in the court filings seem incredible, if true. And they show the depth of anguish the end of the venerable firm really caused. It’s all well and good from behind our computers to smirk in schadenfreude when a Biglaw firm goes down, but there’s a lot of carnage left in its wake.

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Dewey Case Memo Calls Birth of DA’s Case “Troubling” [American Lawyer]

Kathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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