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Summary: A lawsuit has been permitted to continue against former Dewey & LeBoeuf COO Dennis D’Alessandro, according to a ruling from a Manhattan judge.
On Tuesday, a bankruptcy judge defeated an attempt by a former executive from Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP who asked to have a lawsuit dismissed, according to The Wall Street Journal. The lawsuit claims that the former executive owes the creditors of the defunct firm $9.3 million.
The bankruptcy trustee of the firm sued former Chief Operating Officer Dennis D’Alessandro back in March. The trustee was looking for the return of more than $9 million in salary, bonuses and other types of compensation he received from 2008 to 2012.
Alan Jacobs, the trustee for the firm, said that the contract was atypical for the industry and ‘far above’ the services he provided as the COO. He also said that the contract was ‘astronomically generous.’ The lawsuit wants to recover the funds based on the grounds that payments were made to D’Alessandro when the firm was unable to meet other financial obligations.
D’Alessandro disagreed with the lawsuit, saying that it should be thrown out because he was not an insider of the law firm. He also argued that he was paid during the course of business in exchange for his work as an employee of the firm.
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Taking issue with the arguments raised by D’Alessandro was Manhattan Judge Martin Glenn. He said that the allegations show “that the transactions between the parties may not have been made at arm’s length” and said the lawsuit should continue.
Judge Glenn also said that the contract “did not actually require D’Alessandro to do any work; rather, it required Dewey to pay the full contract amount as long as D’Alessandro did not perpetrate a fraud or crime against the firm.”
The attorney for D’Alessandro, Barry Pollack, said his client “has defenses that he will raise in this lawsuit and we believe will ultimately prevail.”
