Category: News on the Homepage

Campolo, Middleton & McCormick, a premier law firm with offices in Westbury, Ronkonkoma, and Bridgehampton, proudly announces that Senior Partner Patrick McCormick has been elected to the Executive Committee (as Secretary) of the Suffolk County Bar Association. This election is a significant professional milestone for McCormick, who has just completed a successful two-year term as Dean of the Academy of Law, the SCBA’s educational arm. McCormick will be sworn in at the SCBA’s 111^th Annual Installation Dinner on June 7, 2019.

McCormick chairs the Appellate Practice group at CMM, having built a reputation as a strategic and talented appellate attorney over nearly three decades in the field. Representing clients in civil and criminal matters in both federal and state court, McCormick has argued numerous appeals, including three arguments at the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. He is also a respected trial attorney, litigating all types of complex commercial and real estate matters, and also represents national commercial shopping centers, retailers, and publicly traded home builders in commercial and residential landlord-tenant matters.

The Suffolk County Bar Association is one of the largest voluntary bar associations in New York State. As Dean of the Academy, McCormick spearheaded the continuing education of thousands of New York lawyers. During his tenure he helped bring the Academy into the future by increasing the number of programs, utilizing new technology, and offering an unprecedented range of topics, scheduling, and formats. In addition to his new role as Secretary and prior roles on the Board of Directors and as Academy Dean, McCormick has served the SCBA as Chair of the Appellate Practice Committee as well as on the Commercial Division, Landlord/Tenant, and Real Property Committees. 

Relationships between business partners can sometimes sour. And other times, they can turn downright ugly.

CMM’s client, a well-respected environmental engineering firm with multiple locations, reported that one of its shareholders (who was also an employee) had abruptly resigned. He began intimidating the company with bogus criminal complaints and threats to report them to governmental agencies, with the sole aim of gaining an advantage in buyout negotiations. He also continued to communicate with and intimidate the company’s employees and consultants. On top of that, our client also learned that the shareholder had violated the duties he owed to the company during his tenure as an officer by commingling business and personal funds, among other wrongdoing.

The shareholder’s egregious behavior had the potential to damage the company’s reputation and business relationships and resulted in delayed business operations and unnecessary costs. Our client therefore sought to restrain the shareholder from any further dealings with the company. In addition to filing a Complaint against the shareholder, CMM moved by Order to Show Cause for a temporary restraining order barring the former shareholder from accessing our client’s credit line or bank accounts, interfering with our client’s business operations, contacting our client’s customers or potential customers, inducing employees to leave the company, or interfering in our client’s day-to-day business operations.

Thanks to the hard work and extraordinary advocacy of senior partners Scott Middleton (who argued the motion in court) and Patrick McCormick, associates Richard DeMaio and David Green, and paralegal Kathleen Johnson, the Court granted all the relief we sought. The Court agreed with CMM’s arguments that the defendant’s continued misconduct violated both the Shareholder’s Agreement and his fiduciary duties. Our client can now move forward by parting ways with the shareholder and starting the company’s next chapter.

Learn more about our wealth of experience handling all types of business divorce matters here.

Many injured or disabled workers fear that a denial of insurance coverage or disability benefits marks the end of an already-frustrating road of red tape and dead ends. But that’s precisely when CMM was retained to turn a client’s difficult journey around.

A Fortune 500 insurance company had denied coverage for long-term disability benefits to our client, insisting that he “did not meet the policy definition of Disability” despite well-documented medical records to the contrary. CMM fought back. Christine Malafi appealed the finding, arguing that our client’s medical records and physician assessments provided well-documented and overwhelming evidence of significant impairment such that our client was wholly unable to work.

CMM further argued that the insurance company’s denial was egregious as it was based entirely on the opinion of their own medical assessor, which was not only a clear conflict of interest but also entirely unsupported by the record. The appeal affirmed that our client was legally entitled to coverage in light of his fully-disabled status as confirmed by the Social Security Administration.

In a major win, CMM’s appeal was so persuasive that the insurance company reversed its own decision within weeks. As anyone who has attempted to obtain disability or insurance benefits knows, such a turnaround time is extraordinary. Our client can now collect benefits, stay in his home, and have financial stability during a difficult medical crisis.

CMM not only represents businesses and individuals, but is also well known for providing superior legal services to towns, villages, school districts, cities, and counties. Our litigation team recently demonstrated their strength in advocating for municipal clients by securing a victory for a Suffolk County Village in a contested land use matter.

The owners of a parcel of land located in the Village had requested a variance to divide their property in two to build another single-family house on the newly created second lot. The Village denied the variance request, citing the minimum required lot area per home pursuant to the local zoning district. Unhappy with the decision, the property owners filed an Article 78 petition (essentially, a legal challenge to the activities of an administrative agency or municipality) with the court, accusing our client of denying zoning variances in an “arbitrary, capricious and prejudicial” manner “contrary to the evidence presented” by the property owner and without substantial evidence to back the decision.

CMM strongly opposed the petition, arguing that the Village was well within its right to deny a variance that adversely impacted the physical and/or environmental conditions of the neighborhood as well as to preserve and protect the neighborhood’s character and the health, safety, and welfare of its residents.

Due to the hard work, diligence, and knowledge of the zoning laws by Senior Partner Scott Middleton and Associate Richard DeMaio, CMM successfully obtained a court order denying the petition and upholding the Village’s decision. Learn more about how we help municipalities here.    

Positioning Hauppauge Industrial Park for the future

By Adina Genn

A new analysis shows that the Hauppauge Industrial Park could position the region for economic growth, officials said.

Released Wednesday at the IBEW offices in Hauppauge, the 160-plus page report was commissioned by the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency and written, produced and designed by James Lima Planning + Development and the Regional Plan Association.

The report identifies strategies to further advance revitalization opportunities by supporting and clustering together industries at the park. It also offers competitor analysis to define additional ways to collaborate, and lessons learned from economic hubs across the country.

In positioning for the future, the park will be renamed as The Long Island Innovation Park at Hauppauge. The new moniker reflects a finding in the report that the park can “further capture economic opportunities of the region and maximize its impact to become a key player in Long Island’s overall economic development.”

The park is home to 1,300 companies that employ more than 55,000 people and its $13 billion of annual output accounts for 8 percent of Long Island’s gross domestic product, according to a press release. And 58 percent of the companies are in “tradable sectors,” or exports of goods from the region.

One of the report’s recommendations includes fostering industry clusters, and the key ones in the region include aerospace vehicles and defense, biopharmaceuticals, business services, construction products and services, distribution and electronic commerce, education and research activities, financial services, food processing and manufacturing and information technology and analytical instruments.

Collectively, the park would benefit if companies within it saw each other as collaborators rather than competitors: “All parties on the Island should be uniting around common goals for workforce training, incubators, co-work space, high-tech shared equipment and housing policies,” according to the report.

“This comprehensive roadmap provides our region with the building blocks needed to strengthen, expand and attract key industry clusters that will push our innovative economy to the next level,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said in a statement.

Five strategies within the report include facilitating business growth, attracting and retaining skilled workers, strengthening training and workforce development, promoting innovation and technology transfer, and connecting business, governments and institutions.

Noting that it’s the largest business park in the northeast, Hauppauge Industrial Association of Long Island President and CEO Terri Alessi-Miceli said that the park is “equipped to fulfill a growth scenario that will redouble its contributions to our regional economy.”

Both the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency and HIA plan to support partnerships with institutions, business and nonprofits to foster growth and learn from one another.

Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim saw many ways for organizations to partner together.

“Imagine neighboring businesses working together to capitalize on mutual growth, a think tank of business professionals working to help innovate local companies to the next level, the private sector working with public institutions to plan for alternative energy or create walkable communities for the next generation of great innovators to live and play,” he said. “The possibilities are truly endless.”

A rendering showed the potential for housing, which could help attract workforce.

“While the Hauppauge Industrial Park already plays an essential role in powering the Long Island economy, it still has tremendous untapped value,” Joe Campolo, the board chair of HIA-LI and managing partner at Campolo, Middleton & McCormick in Ronkonkoma said in a statement. “After analyzing a full spectrum of strategic options, we now have a viable, clear-eyed, long-term plan that will maximize the park’s value for decades to come.”

Theresa Ward, chair of the Suffolk County IDA board of directors, said officials are “extremely proud of this report, which takes a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities inherent in Long Island’s key economic generator.”

“The Hauppauge Industrial Park has been a significant hotbed for economic development and growth and this reimagining of the Park gets everyone involved in economic development in this region excited because the potential is so real and obtainable,” she added.

Read more here.

Joe Campolo, CMM Managing Partner and HIA-LI Board Chairman, moderated HIA-LI’s panel discussion, “Hauppauge Industrial Park: Current and Future Growth,” on April 24, 2019 at IBEW in Hauppauge. He delivered these remarks to the hundreds of guests in attendance.

I’d like to welcome everyone to our Hauppauge Industrial Park Update this morning. As Chairman of the HIA-LI Board of Directors and a Long Island business owner, I’m honored to join you as the moderator for this event as we embark on our region’s next chapter.

As steward of the Hauppauge Industrial Park, the second largest in the nation behind only Silicon Valley, HIA-LI has spent the last several years working tirelessly to spread the word about this incredible economic engine. And we have indeed made an enormous impact. One of my proudest accomplishments as Board Chairman is our success in making the numbers and facts that we learned through the Economic Impact Study so well known – so much so that the Park’s identity as an economic powerhouse is no longer a secret, but rather part of the fabric and story of Long Island.

Today you are going to hear new incredible numbers and facts that we’ve discovered about the economic power of the businesses in the Park, this time from the opportunity analysis that HIA-LI, Jim Lima, the RPA, and the Suffolk IDA have been working so hard on.

You’re going to learn how our beloved Long Island possesses economic assets that are greater than any other per-capita district in the country. You’ll hear new ways that Long Island can leverage these incredible assets to achieve greater economic growth, by capitalizing in the tradable industries that are already prospering and growing in the Park. During this presentation, you’re going to learn that not every dollar is created equal. In fact, a dollar generated in the Hauppauge Industrial Park is worth $2 generated elsewhere on Long Island and about $1.25 nationwide. That is truly incredible.

Our mission now is to accelerate this growth by relentlessly pushing and marketing and spreading the word about the Park as the region’s premier hub for growing businesses, and to continue building bridges between the public and private sectors to truly make a tremendous impact.

The fact is, the opportunity analysis concludes what we’ve always suspected: that there are amazing companies in the Park doing incredible things for the economy. Now that we are armed with this critical information, our task is to determine how the private and public sectors can work even better together to facilitate growth.

You see, this project is an example of a successful partnership between industry and government. It’s this collaboration that will ensure Long Island’s economic viability in the future. We need both business and government support: society doesn’t work well if it’s just one or the other.

We are fortunate to have elected officials who get it, and continue to express a renewed commitment to investing in the Park.  We thank them and assure them that, in return, we at the HIA-LI will always tirelessly fight for Long Island and its business community.

Thank you.

Download the Executive Summary of the Opportunity Analysis here.

Thank you for having us here today and for listening to this important study. Like everybody else here on the dais, I love Long Island. When I left Long Island to go into the Marine Corps there was never any doubt that I was going to come back here and spend my career here. I attended Stony Brook University, and I loved Stony Brook. And then I went to law school, and after law school I had many opportunities to work in the city, but I wanted to come back to Long Island, particularly Suffolk County. And people said, “Why do you want to go to Suffolk County? It’s farm country, there’s nothing going on out there!” And I said there’s an opportunity there, I just know it.

I love Long Island, and I love Suffolk County. I believe in its greatness. And as part of this I joined the HIA-LI, and people said, “Why are you joining the HIA-LI? There are bigger business organizations out there that can help you grow.” And I said I love the HIA-LI, and I know that there’s something special about that industrial park. The report that was released today has proven that every one of my inclinations about Long Island and Suffolk County is true.

The Hauppauge Industrial Park has the highest cluster of tradable industries in the nation. It’s the second largest industrial park in the nation. It means we bring in more new dollars per capita in our park than any other spot here in the United States. So to Mr. County Executive, I say if this is farm country, then you’re doing a pretty damn good job! The other beautiful thing that has happened during this process is not withstanding what’s going on there in the beltway, there’s been a total collaboration across all lines. On this stage you have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have real estate developers, you have business people, you have educational organizations, everyone came together to get this done. And so we’re not just the leading economic hub in the United States, we’re the leading collaborative group of talented individuals that exists in these United States, and should be a role model for every private and public partnership that’s out there today. So on behalf of everyone that was involved in creating this study, James Lima Planning, hats off to you, you confirmed what I had always believed, and it’s given us an opportunity so that our children when they turn 21 and they’re deciding where they want to go after they graduate from college, Long Island and Suffolk County is a very viable option. Thank you very much.

HIA-LI President & CEO Terri Alessi-Miceli announced that the new name of the park will be “The Long Island Innovation Park at Hauppauge.” Download the Executive Summary of the Opportunity Analysis here.

When a New York City business discovered that one of its shareholders was diverting millions of dollars in business capital for himself and competing entities and was also stealing the company’s confidential and proprietary data, CMM was there to help.

Our client is an alternative finance company that helps small businesses obtain financing to grow their businesses and the local economy. When they learned that one of their own was exploiting the firm’s resources for his own purposes, they called on CMM for advice and legal assistance.

CMM’s Jeffrey Basso and Richard DeMaio successfully moved by order to show cause and obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting the shareholder and any company he may be working for from soliciting any of our client’s customers, business leads, or referral sources – a huge win for our client while the court considers the underlying motion. CMM also defeated the shareholder’s own request for a temporary restraining order, which sought to have a receiver appointed and force our client to essentially close down the business.

Our client is thrilled with the result and reported how much CMM’s preparation impressed them.

Learn more about our commercial litigation work.

Jeffrey Basso is a Partner based in our Ronkonkoma office.

CMM: You graduated from the University of Delaware before heading to St. John’s University School of Law. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

JB: I majored in Criminal Justice at Delaware because the topic always interested me growing up, but when I graduated from college, I really was not interested in pursuing any careers that would typically be offered to someone with a Criminal Justice major.  So, I decided to take a year off after I graduated and got a job working at a law firm on Long Island doing a lot of writing.  I found that I enjoyed writing in a legal setting and making arguments on behalf of clients and, ultimately, that’s what led me to pursue a career as a lawyer.

CMM: You were born and raised on Long Island and never left (except for college)! You’ve crisscrossed Suffolk and Nassau at different points in your life and now live in Commack. Tell us your Long Island story.

JB: Long Island has always been a huge part of my life.  My mom lived on Long Island her entire life.  My dad came to New York from Italy when he was around 18 years old and, when they got married, they bought a house in Suffolk County that my family grew up in.  My parents still live there over 40 years later.  Having grown up in eastern Suffolk County, then living in Long Beach for several years after college to now raising my family in Commack, I have gotten to experience so much of what Long Island has to offer such as the thriving business community, highly regarded schools, great beaches, wineries and local breweries, renowned restaurants, proximity to New York City and on and on.  If there was only a way to reduce property taxes and make the traffic disappear every time I try to get on or off the island, that would be perfect. 

CMM: You came to CMM in 2012 after working at other firms. What attracted you to CMM?

JB: I worked at a couple smaller law firms on Long Island to begin my career, and I really could not envision a future with them. I still remember when I first interviewed with CMM and had the opportunity to meet with Joe Campolo, Pat McCormick and other attorneys at the firm, you could tell this place was different and that it was an up and coming firm with a different philosophy and vision compared to most firms.  I wanted to be a part of it.  I saw CMM as an opportunity to really launch my career and become a permanent fixture for me and, over the past seven years, that has truly been the case. 

CMM: CMM has grown exponentially since you came on board. What has it been like being part of that growth?

JB: When I first started, CMM had about 11 attorneys, and we were cramped in a small office bursting at the seams.  In the seven years since I started, we have tripled in size and now have a much bigger main headquarters in Ronkonkoma and two additional offices in Bridgehampton and Westbury.  It has been amazing to watch it and be a part of it.  The message and philosophy of the firm has really resonated on Long Island with the business community and has been a huge part of why the firm continues to grow and develop great, long-term relationships with clients all over the island. 

CMM: What practice areas do you focus on?

JB: My primary focus is on commercial litigation and employment litigation.  The types of cases I handle range from complex shareholder/partnership disputes typically referred to as “business divorces” to business mergers or acquisitions that go bad to employment matters involving employees breaching restrictive covenants, misappropriating trade secrets, stealing business clients, etc., to wage and discrimination matters to basic contract and commercial real estate disputes.  The matters I handle really run the gamut of the types of disputes business owners are faced with daily.   

CMM: If you couldn’t be a lawyer, what would you be doing?

JB: The one career I seriously considered pursuing before I went to law school was working for the FBI in some capacity, possibly as a profiler.  I was always fascinated with the FBI and being involved in criminal investigations which is what led to my criminal justice major in college, but I ultimately elected to go the attorney route instead.

CMM: What is the most valuable thing a lawyer can do for his or her clients?

JB: Listen to what the client wants to accomplish on any given matter.  For me handling litigation matters, it is important to understand why a client is in the position he/she/it is in and what that client is looking to gain.  It could be that the client wants to just use litigation as leverage to force a settlement, or the client is desperate because he or she is being forced out of the company, or the client wants to send a message to other employees, or any number of other reasons.  Knowing what a client is trying to accomplish from the outset allows the attorney to plan accordingly and better advise the client.  Too often, attorneys don’t listen and instead follow a path that the client never wanted or intended.    

CMM: How do you spend your weekends?

JB: My time on weekends is precious because there is such little time to unwind during the week.  I have two little daughters so most of my weekend time is spent with them as my wife and I try to keep them entertained.  It’s exhausting, but I love the time I get to spend with them.  Once it gets warm out, I love going to the beach and hanging out by my outdoor fire pit with friends and family.  If stuck inside, I’m a huge sports fan and often battle with the kids over watching the Jets/Mets or Disney princess movies.

CMM: How can Long Island keep young people living and working here, as well as attract others such as yourself, who may otherwise look to NYC or other cities for career opportunities?

JB: You can see that certain areas of Long Island, like Patchogue and Farmingdale as two examples, get it and are working to keep young people on Long Island by revitalizing downtowns and offering housing that is convenient walking distance to everything.  That certainly entices young people and gives them the opportunity to stay (although losing Amazon didn’t help), but the problem remains that everything is still so expensive on Long Island.  Friends of mine that live out of state pay a fraction of what we pay on Long Island for taxes and other cost of living items, and salaries for most people, especially the younger workforce, are not commensurate with those added Long Island costs.  Until that changes, I think many young people are going to continue to look elsewhere for employment.  CMM is proud to take a leadership role in this area by working closely with HIA-LI and the business community to attract and retain top talent.