Kramer Levin Co-Chair Gary Naftalis Receives the Norman S. Ostrow Award from the New York Council of Defense Lawyers

Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP is pleased to announce that Gary P. Naftalis has received the Norman S. Ostrow Award from the New York Council of Defense Lawyers, a recognition given annually to a lawyer for “outstanding contribution to the defense of liberty and the preservation of individual rights.” Mr. Naftalis accepted the award at a ceremony Friday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York that was attended by more than 600 people.

Mr. Naftalis is the head of Kramer Levin’s Litigation Department and firm Co-Chair. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He has for some 40 years represented individuals and corporations in all phases of complex bet-the-company civil, criminal, and regulatory matters, including those involving allegations of insider trading, market manipulation, accounting irregularities, stock options backdating and other financial fraud. Mr. Naftalis has received many other recognitions, including being named one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by The National Law Journal, one of the 10 Leading Trial Lawyers in the United States by Legal 500, and one of the Top 10 Lawyers in New York by Super Lawyers. He is the recipient of the Chambers USA 2011 Award for Excellence in White Collar Crime and Government Investigations.

In recent years, Mr. Naftalis has been involved in many of the most significant regulatory and white collar cases including the successful defenses of Kenneth Langone, former Chair of the New York Stock Exchange Compensation Committee, in regard to the lawsuit brought against him by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer relating to the compensation of NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso; and the City of New York in the inquiry by the New York County District Attorney relating to the fire at the Deutsche Bank building.

The New York Council of Defense Lawyers established the award to honor its founder, Norman S. Ostrow, a prominent criminal defense lawyer who died in 1988. The NYCDL is a not-for-profit professional association with a membership of about 200 lawyers whose principal area of practice is the defense of criminal cases, particularly in the federal courts in New York. The group’s mission includes protecting and ensuring individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution by rule of law through education; supporting and advancing the criminal defense function by enhancing the quality of defense representation; taking positions on important defense issues; promoting study and research in the criminal justice system; and promoting the proper administration of criminal justice.