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Abell Eskew Landau LLP (AEL), a boutique law firm specializing in white-collar criminal defense, government investigations, commercial litigation, and healthcare regulatory counseling, proudly announces that former Southern District of New York (SDNY) federal prosecutor Jarrod L. Schaeffer and highly regarded commercial litigator Jeffrey L. Braun have joined the firm.

Schaeffer joins AEL as a partner after serving for more than five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) for the SDNY.  As an AUSA, Schaeffer investigated and prosecuted cases involving corruption, fraud, and international money laundering. Most recently, Schaeffer served as a senior member of the SDNY’s Public Corruption Unit where he handled some of the office’s most sophisticated and sensitive matters, including high-profile investigations and prosecutions of politicians, law enforcement officers, and attorneys. Schaeffer’s hire follows AEL’s addition of Heather Suchorsky, another former federal prosecutor, last year.   

“We are excited to welcome Jarrod to the firm as a partner and senior member of the team,” said David M. Eskew, one of AEL’s three founding partners and himself a former AUSA. “Jarrod is a phenomenal criminal and civil litigator, and with his addition, AEL’s ever-growing bench of talent now includes five former federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of New Jersey, further building upon our already well-recognized capability to handle the most sophisticated and difficult white collar criminal cases in this region.”

“I’m very excited to join Ken, David, Scott, and the growing team at AEL,” said Schaeffer. “In just a few short years, the firm has developed an impressive track record and I look forward to assisting clients in criminal defense and government enforcement matters, as well as in complex commercial and civil litigation.”

Eskew explained the strategic value of the move. “Our white collar criminal defense and government investigations practices have grown substantially over the past few years following some notable successes, including dismissals of charged cases in the SDNY, EDNY and DNJ. As a result, we have been consistently engaged in charged cases and investigations in each of the three big federal districts in the NY/NJ metro area. By adding Jarrod to the team, we bring in a well-respected former prosecutor from SDNY, which was a piece we were previously missing. Now, half of our attorneys are former federal prosecutors and we can boast prior government service and experience in each of the major federal districts in our area. Our firm is already well-known for its expertise in criminal and civil healthcare fraud investigations. With the addition of Jarrod this year and Heather Suchorsky last year, we are poised to expand our reach and expertise in 2024 into other complex fraud cases, including public corruption, financial fraud and money laundering cases.”

Braun, who joins AEL as Counsel, is a highly regarded litigator and counselor with broad experience handling commercial and business disputes. Before joining AEL, Braun spent most of his career as a litigation partner at two national law firms. His practice focuses on complex and often high-profile commercial, real estate, land use, and environmental matters for leading developers, corporations, and nonprofit institutions. Chambers & Co. describes him as “a great litigator with deep experience,” and he was recently ranked number 13 on the New York City and State’s Law Power 100 List honoring lawyers with the biggest impact on New York State.

“Several years ago I had the privilege of working with Jeff on a high-profile land-use case. His skill and expertise handling complex matters led to a resounding victory for our client,” said AEL founding partner Scott R. Landau. “We are thrilled that Jeff is making the jump from ‘big law’ to our boutique law practice, where he will continue to serve clients in high-stakes commercial and real estate matters and will help further grow AEL’s civil litigation practice.”

“Joining a boutique law firm is an exciting change for me, and I’m thrilled to be here,” said Braun. “I was so impressed with Scott when we worked together a few years ago. Ken and David are equally impressive, and AEL has built such a strong team that I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of it.”

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AEL was founded in 2020, just weeks before the global pandemic, by three former federal prosecutors. The firm specializes in white collar criminal defense and government investigations, with a particular focus on federal parallel criminal and civil investigations and cases in the healthcare industry in New York and New Jersey. The firm also handles complex commercial litigation and healthcare regulatory counseling. Since its launch, AEL has achieved consistent growth and has expanded to a team of ten attorneys, including five former federal prosecutors, and focuses on providing practical, no-nonsense, client-centered representation and counsel.

AEL attorneys David M. Eskew and Heather Suchorsky obtained dismissal of all federal charges against an AEL client in a case involving allegations by federal prosecutors that the client participated in a fraudulent COVID-19 lab testing conspiracy. This is the third time that AEL has obtained this exceedingly rare result in a criminal case in the past two years (see prior posts here, here, and here). Utilizing an evidence-based approach to refute the charges in the criminal complaint, AEL presented on multiple occasions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office arguing that the charges were factually unsupported and inaccurate. After a lengthy process, AEL convinced federal prosecutors to dismiss all charges against the client.

Regarding AEL’s work on the case, the client offered the following comments:

I am beyond grateful for all of the hard work that David and Heather did on my case. My family feels truly blessed and happy to have found the AEL team and are anxious to put the darkness of these charges behind our family forever. David and Heather exhibited outstanding teamwork, professionalism, responsiveness, diligence and excellence in convincing the government to dismiss the charges against me. The most important thing to me was that David and Heather never wavered in their belief that I was innocent of the charges and fought for me every step of the way based on that belief.

Federal prosecutors initially charged the client and multiple other co-defendants by criminal complaint in early 2022 with conspiracy to violate the federal Antikickback Statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7(b)(1). The complaint alleged that the co-defendants conspired to pay and receive illegal kickbacks and bribes related to the referral of COVID-19 tests to a NJ-based laboratory. The government incorrectly labeled the client a “marketer” of COVID-19 tests for the laboratory and accused the defendant of accepting bribes in order to refer thousands of COVID-19 tests to the laboratory.

In the two-year period following the charges, AEL worked collaboratively with the client to review extensive evidence showing that the client was the operator of a legitimate mobile COVID-19 testing business and not a marketer for the laboratory. AEL made multiple productions to the government and provided detailed evidence-based presentations. In late 2022, the government returned an indictment against the client’s co-defendants, advancing the case against those individuals, but left AEL’s client off the indictment. In July 2023, federal prosecutors dismissed the charges against AEL’s client in their entirety, ending the case against him.

AEL specializes in federal white-collar criminal defense with a particular expertise in parallel criminal and civil investigations involving individual and institutional healthcare clients ranging from doctors, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals to large national hospital systems, laboratories, life sciences companies, and healthcare adjacent entities. AEL has an established track record of assisting clients in avoiding and minimizing federal charges and pushing back against federal prosecutors and agencies with AEL’s signature evidence-based, detail-oriented approach.

*** The foregoing may constitute attorney advertising and readers are cautioned that prior results do not guarantee future outcomes.

AEL’s streak of successful appellate victories continues with our recent victory on behalf of clients Mount Sinai Health System (“MSHS”), South Nassau Communities Hospital (“SNCH”), and South Nassau Medical Group, P.C. (“SNMG”) in South Nassau v. 105 Rockaway Realty, LLC, a dispute regarding the terms of a lease for commercial office space in a building in the Rockaways in Queens. Scott R. Landau and Kenneth M. Abell represented MSHS, SNCH, and SNMG in this matter. 

In this case, the parties disputed whether SNMG owed any responsibilities under a lease given that an express condition precedent in the lease had not occurred. Specifically, the lease had expressly conditioned SNMG’s obligations thereunder on SNCH “obtaining, on terms acceptable to it,” an equity ownership in a certain Ambulatory Surgery Center (“ASC”) that was to be established in the same building. Though it was undisputed that the condition had not actually occurred, the landlord claimed that SNMG could not use the failure of the condition as a basis for “escaping” its obligations because satisfaction of the condition was within the control of its affiliate, SNCH. The landlord also asserted a claim against MSHS, which had later become the parent of SNCH, for tortious interference with contract, alleging that it had “directed” South Nassau not to invest in the ASC.

Given the plain and express language of the condition precedent, we moved for pre-discovery summary judgment seeking a declaration that SNMG did not have responsibilities under the lease because the condition precedent did not occur. Following the trial court’s granting summary judgment (and dismissing the landlord’s tortious interference claim against MSHS), the landlord appealed, arguing that there were open questions of fact regarding whether SNMG and SNCH had sufficiently negotiated to invest in the ASC, and that reversal and remand was accordingly required for discovery into whether they had violated the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing implicit in the lease. 

On August 24, 2022, the Second Department rejected the landlord’s appeal and affirmed the trial court’s decisions. In so ruling, the Second Department agreed with our argument that the six (6) word condition precedent in the lease contemplated the exercise of discretion by SNCH/SNMG, and thus that that the obligations the landlord sought to imply into the lease were inconsistent with the actual terms of that agreement. The court thus held that the questions of fact raised by the landlord were not actually material, and that reversal and remand was thus not necessary because there was no dispute as to the actual material question at issue – whether or not the condition precedent had been met (it had not). The court also affirmed dismissal of the landlord’s tortious interference with contract claim against MSHS, for failure to raise a triable issue of fact that the lease had actually been breached. 

AEL are accomplished commercial and appellate counsel who have achieved victory for clients in myriad business litigations and disputes. We are proud to have obtained victories for our great clients MHSH, SNCH, and SNMG in this matter, and look forward to helping our clients achieve success in commercial disputes and appellate matters in the future. You can read more about our commercial litigation practice here.