Marc Cherno (Cornell BA ’57, Harvard JD ’60) is now of counsel at Fried Frank after a lengthy career litigating. He’s also a Madoff victim, to the tune of just over $1 million.
Cherno’s got courtroom skillz, though, so he’s not taking this lying down. Despite spending most of his career representing corporate clients, often against shareholder class actions, he’s teaming up with one of the preeminent firms in that field: Milberg. They’re working together to recoup investors’ money.
Analysis of some of Cherno’s career highlights, and how he got involved with Madoff, after the jump.
Cherno isn’t the first BigLawyer to fall victim to Madoff. A few months ago we identified three Paul Weiss lawyers who were also duped: Partner Steven Simkin (Penn BS ‘69, Penn JD ‘73), whose divorce was the reason we looked at the list, and of counsels David Washburn (UVM BA ‘52, NYU LLB ‘55) and Of Counsel Martin London (Cornell BA ‘55, NYU LLB ‘57).
According to AmLaw Daily,
In the 1980s, Cherno was a presence in the biggest takeover battles of the decade and frequently found himself across the table from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Considering we all know who Herb Wachtell (who ran WLRK’s “successful slip n’ fall practice group (now servicing Bronx County)”) and Joe Flom are, but had never heard of (or at least didn’t remember hearing of) Cherno, he probably didn’t do so well. But against that opposition, who could have?
At Fried Frank, Cherno played a role in the high-profile takeover battle between Bendix Corp. and Martin Marietta Corp. in 1982. He presented oral arguments to the Supreme Court when Fried Frank client Burlington Northern Inc.’s hostile bid for El Paso Gas made it to the High Court in 1984. Cherno also represented Forstmann Little when Ronald Perelman made his ultimately successful hostile bid for the private equity firm’s leveraged buyout target Revlon, Inc. in 1985.
So how good was he? He was on the losing end of at least one opinion from the Bendix fight, which was an interesting pissing match between Martin Marietta and United Technologies for control of Bendix. The Burlington Northern case he won, but Cherno only argued against some guy Irving Bizar (for all I know he’s a super litigator, but I don’t know those people). The fight for Revlon in 1985 is a fascinating M&A story, but Cherno backed the wrong horse in that race (although considering Revlon has been a pretty consistent loser, maybe losing the bidding war was the better result). So he might not have had the results, but at least he was in the race.
Oh, and the Madoff involvement?
He’s never met Madoff. But his ex-wife’s family invested for years with Madoff, he says, and when he had enough money, Cherno invested, too.
Bitch.
Related posts:
