Judicial data via CourtListener (Free Law Project). Social links via Wikidata.
Affiliations
District Court, S.D. New York — appointed by William Jefferson Clinton
Party: Democratic →B.A., Hobart William Smith CollegesLL.B., Yale University
Decision levers
AI-measured from their own opinions — each lever cites its cases
PurposivismTextualism
In Layzer the court parsed the Medicare statute’s definition of a covered Part D drug by its plain terms, requiring only FDA approval without additional compendia support. LAYZER v. Leavitt ↗
Willing to revisit precedentStrong stare decisis
The court applied the Supreme Court’s Morrison decision to bar Exchange Act claims for swaps referencing foreign securities. Elliott Associates v. Porsche Au… ↗
Deference to government powerSkepticism of government power
In Layzer the court rejected the Secretary’s reading of Medicare coverage rules in favor of beneficiaries. LAYZER v. Leavitt ↗
In Layzer v. Leavitt, Medicare beneficiaries Judith Layzer and Ray Fischer sued the Secretary of Health and Human Services after their plan sponsors denied coverage under Medicare Part D for the drugs Cetrotide and Increlex, which were prescribed off-label for rare conditions (ovarian cancer and muscular dystrophy) not listed in the statutory compendia. The court addressed whether the statute and its implementing regulation required such compendia support for FDA-approved drugs to qualify as covered Part D drugs. The district court denied the Secretary’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and granted the plaintiffs’ cross-motion, holding that the Medicare statute’s definition of a covered Part D drug does not impose a compendia requirement when a drug is FDA-approved, and therefore reversed the coverage denials and ordered appropriate reimbursement.
In Howe v. Bank of New York Mellon, plaintiff R. Davis Howe alleged that the trustee Bank of New York Mellon and other defendants caused losses of $13.2 million by wrongfully allowing the removal of $24 million in collateral securities from the PreTSL XX trust through a tender offer repurchase of trust preferred securities that violated the governing indenture. The plaintiff asserted eleven causes of action, including breach of contract, tortious interference with contract, breach of fiduciary duty, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, and rescission, both individually and derivatively on behalf of the issuer. The court addressed cross-motions for summary judgment as well as prior motions to dismiss, granting them in part and denying them in part after analyzing the indenture terms, the validity of noteholder consents, and defenses such as economic interest in the tortious interference claims.
In Veera v. Ambac Plan Administrative Order Committee, a former Ambac employee brought a purported class action under ERISA against the plan's administrative, investment, and compensation committees and their members, claiming breaches of fiduciary duties. The plaintiff alleged that the defendants imprudently continued to offer Ambac stock as an investment option and failed to monitor its suitability during the 2006-2008 class period, despite awareness of the company's loosening underwriting standards, overstated financials, and exposure to losses that led to a sharp stock decline and eventual bankruptcy. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that the plan required offering the stock and thus they exercised no discretionary control triggering fiduciary liability. The court denied the motion, holding that the plan documents conferred discretionary authority on the committees over plan assets and administration, making ERISA fiduciary duties applicable, and that the allegations plausibly stated claims for breaches of prudence and monitoring duties.
This case involved multiple hedge funds suing Porsche Automobil Holding SE and two of its executives for alleged violations of section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act, Rule 10b-5, section 20(a), and common law fraud. The plaintiffs claimed that Porsche secretly accumulated nearly all freely traded VW shares as part of a takeover plan, made false public denials, and used manipulative derivatives trades, causing a sharp rise in VW stock prices that led to losses on the plaintiffs' security-based swap agreements referencing VW shares. The court consolidated the actions and granted the defendants' motions to dismiss all complaints. The core reasoning was that the Supreme Court's decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank barred application of the Exchange Act because the referenced VW securities were not listed on a U.S. exchange and the transactions were not domestic.
This case is a proposed class action by subscribers of Sirius XM satellite radio alleging that the 2008 merger of Sirius and XM created an unlawful monopoly in violation of the Clayton and Sherman Acts, leading to higher prices, and that the company breached customer agreements and state consumer protection laws by misrepresenting a music royalty fee as a mere pass-through cost. The defendant moved to dismiss eleven late-added plaintiffs, certain state-law claims for lack of standing, and the contract-related claims, while plaintiffs sought to bifurcate the federal antitrust claims from the others. The court granted the motion to dismiss in part, dismissing the eleven plaintiffs added after the joinder deadline and some state consumer protection claims due to standing issues, but denied dismissal of other claims including certain contract and consumer protection allegations; it also denied bifurcation. The reasoning applied federal pleading standards under Twombly and Iqbal, emphasized that standing is generally antecedent to class certification, and assessed the sufficiency of allegations regarding the royalty fee description and market monopoly without reaching the merits of the unchallenged antitrust claims.
In Vasquez v. United States, the petitioner, who had been convicted after trial of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute over five kilograms of cocaine, filed a pro se habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 more than seven months after the one-year statute of limitations had run, claiming ineffective assistance of trial counsel for failing to object to certain wiretap evidence and for not advising him on the benefits of a guilty plea, and seeking equitable tolling. The court denied the petition, holding that Vasquez had not shown extraordinary circumstances warranting tolling of the limitations period. The court further found that even if the petition were timely, the ineffective assistance claims failed because counsel's decisions were reasonable and Vasquez could not demonstrate prejudice, particularly given his continued assertion of innocence and the modest sentencing disparity between a potential plea and the sentence received after trial.