A New York professional sports franchise is drawn into a police investigation involving one of its players and is wrongly accused in the media of failing to cooperate with authorities.
An international construction company is victimized by a brothel in Mexico, fraudulently charging more than half a million dollars to the corporate credit card of one of its employees.
A well-known investment adviser for a major Wall Street firm is about to be prosecuted and lose his securities license because of misstatements made in a police report.
A national restaurant chain learns that a disgruntled employee has been booked by a network news morning show and is prepared to make salacious charges to buttress her discrimination complaint.
These are but a few of the clients that h.ave turned to McCarter for successful crisis management. Crisis Management involves strategic and focused advice and counsel in response to a serious event requiring prompt action, be it through legal or regulatory authorities, through the media or through the court system. For these clients, and for McCarter's many other corporate and individual clients facing a crisis, the attorneys at McCarter combine their experience in safeguarding rights and shielding liability in criminal and civil litigation with proven conflict resolution strategies aimed at preserving or rehabilitating a client's business interests.
Members of McCarter's Crisis Management Group are experienced in implementing our general approach to Crisis Management: Containment, Response and Remediation. "Contain the Situation" means identifying, appraising, understanding, and coping with a serious situation from the moment it first occurs. This will include the McCarter team debriefing key people, expeditiously investigating the facts, and advising the client as to the best course of immediate action to contain any initial damage to the client's reputation and/or business interests. "Response" means mapping an immediate course of action in consultation with the client. This could involve implementing a curative measure, crafting a public message, developing a litigation strategy or some combination of all of these activities. "Remediation" means executing the strategic response so that the client is firmly in control of the crisis.
Members of McCarter's Crisis Management Group regularly call upon the expertise of our attorneys in the firm's wide variety of specialties, which has included white collar crime, products liability, securities law, employment law and sports and entertainment law. The core of McCarter's Crisis Management Group includes the following attorneys:
Jamieson Karson: Former Chairman and CEO of the footwear fashion company Steve Madden Ltd. During his tenure at the helm of this public company, the founder pled guilty to securities crimes, triggering a daily onslaught of problems. Mr. Karson nonetheless successfully guided the corporation to an impressive increase in sales, profits and market cap, resulting in the Company being recognized as the footwear industry's "Company of the Year" in two separate years, and Mr. Karson being named to HVS' annual list as one of the top 10 retail CEOs in America in 2008.
Jack Hewitt: Mr. Hewitt is a former attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, who began the SEC's investigation into Michael Milken, as described in the factual depiction of that period in the book Eagle on the Street. Many of the firm's clients in the securities industry become directly and indirectly entangled in crises related to the securities laws, and Mr. Hewitt has the first-hand experience required to determine the correct approach.
McCarter also utilizes the firm's numerous former-prosecutors and criminal defense counsel, who practice throughout its offices, when managing a given crisis. Indeed, McCarter's crisis management professionals hail from the many practice groups within the firm.
In a crisis, business people to turn to their lawyers in no small part because of the protections afforded by the time-honored confidentiality privilege, established by the attorney-client relationship. Where necessary, McCarter will retain reputable outside specialists with whom we maintain ongoing relationships, such as public relations firms and private investigators. But in doing so we take care to legally preserve and hold inviolate our clients' confidences. Indeed, McCarter has been in this business for more than one hundred and sixty years -- a track record unassailable by any emerging, non-legal crisis management industry. McCarter's Crisis Management Group's experience, insight and its proven approach give it a considerable advantage in serving our clients in that time of need.