Corey Stoughton, Kelley Cornish and David Coon of Selendy Gay.
When retaining counsel, it’s vital to have a team who will see the case through to the end. A client needs to be able to trust that their legal team will stay by their side, crafting masterful strategy and providing in-depth support through discovery, depositions, jury selection, and, if it comes to it, all the way through trial.
If the trial verdict is the end of the road, that is. As the lawyers at New York litigation firm Selendy Gay know, it often isn’t. That’s why they integrate appellate strategy from the outset – emphasizing efficiency, client connection and unparalleled trial expertise.
“We bring appellate lawyers into our cases from the very beginning so that the strategy has the end game in mind from day one,” says Special Counsel Corey Stoughton, who came to Selendy Gay in 2024 as a key member of the firm’s appellate practice.
A true generalist litigation firm, Selendy Gay was founded in 2018 as an elite team of trial experts. As a disputes-only firm, there are no individual departments, and therefore no distinct appellate practice. Instead, the practice is folded into the firm’s overall approach, with partners litigating at both the trial and appellate levels.
The firm’s attorneys thrive on that variety, diving into complex cases across a host of focuses. They have covered high-profile constitutional and administrative law matters, international bankruptcy claims, white-collar investigations, groundbreaking class actions, key international arbitrations and corporate governance and shareholder rights issues – all on both sides of the V.
Selendy Gay’s appellate practice reflects that diversity. In some cases, the firm handled the case at the trial court level and the client wanted them to see it through the appeal, knowing that the firm is fastidious in creating a favorable record the first time around. This happened most recently in a matter the firm won for Fortis Advisors, as representatives of the former shareholders of Auris Health, in an earnout dispute against Johnson & Johnson. After the Delaware Court of Chancery found the shareholders entitled to more than $1B – the largest earnout-related damages award in Delaware history – Selendy Gay is now representing Fortis in defending that victory on appeal.
Other times, cases come to the firm on appeal, when a case hasn’t gone well for a company or individual and they need a firm well-versed in appellate work to get an unfavorable decision reversed. In a complex matter brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Selendy Gay recently defended Mohammed Ali Rashid, a former partner at a leading global investment management firm, on appeal after a district court found him liable for violations of the Investment Advisers Act (IAA). In the Second Circuit, Selendy Gay took over and obtained a complete reversal of the district court’s judgment in March 2024. The appellate court found that Mr. Rashid did not breach his fiduciary duties or defraud clients in violation of the IAA, leading the district court to enter judgment in his favor and the SEC to dismiss a follow-on administrative proceeding it had initiated.
“Our foundation in trial practice means that we are able to get really smart, really fast on clients’ cases, no matter how niche or complex,” explains David Coon, a Selendy Gay partner who has won several high-profile appeals in the Second Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. “We leverage that deep understanding of the trial court record to design appellate strategies that maximize our clients’ likelihood of success.”
Several of the firm’s partners are known for their landmark litigation against major financial institutions, which often go up on appeal; in one case, the circuit court affirmed a more than $800 million victory in Selendy Gay’s case on behalf of the Federal Housing Finance Agency in a residential mortgage-backed securities fraud litigation against Nomura and RBS. In 2023, the firm won a judgment of $855 million in New York Supreme Court on behalf of private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management in a breach of contract litigation against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The trial verdict, which CIBC did not appeal following a post-trial settlement, was substantially shaped by the firm’s appellate work on interlocutory issues that preceded trial.
In 2022, meanwhile, founding partner Faith Gay and partners Coon, Lena Konanova, and Lauren Zimmerman represented a class of public servants in a class action against federal student loan servicer Navient. The parties came to a financial and operational settlement after the public servants class successfully fought off a motion to dismiss, but lawyers from Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute objected to the settlement and appealed to overturn it. The Second Circuit unanimously affirmed the settlement, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari, ensuring that members of the class and fellow student loan borrowers would receive important relief granted by the settlement.
With a host of other high-profile appellate wins, including headline-dominating matters in the restructuring and impact litigation spaces, the depth of appellate expertise at Selendy Gay provides unparalleled coverage in disputes from beginning to end – from initial pleadings all the way to the Supreme Court.
CREATIVE WINS
While Selendy Gay attorneys specialize in trials, they come to that focus from a diverse set of experiences. Among Selendy Gay’s team are former prosecutors, commercial litigators, business specialists and civil rights litigators with deep experience on offense and defense. “That range of expertise means we’re able to find paths to victory that others don’t see,” says Stoughton. “That kind of creativity is encouraged and nurtured at Selendy Gay.”
We leverage that deep understanding of the trial court record to design appellate strategies that maximize our clients’ likelihood of success.
This creativity doesn’t always lie in new approaches to old decisions, however – sometimes, it’s in interpreting new or nonexistent law in emerging spaces. Selendy Gay is a forerunner in the crypto-asset space, taking alleged wrongdoing in the nascent industry to task while also defending innovation. In an industry where the laws are being written as cases are litigated, it’s a perfect fit for Selendy Gay’s fast-paced, multi-dimensional practice.
When the legal theories are that contentious, the ground is rife for appeals. The firm recently represented a putative class of crypto investors who traded on cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase. The case, headed by partner Jordan Goldstein, argued that the platform illegally facilitated the transaction of digital tokens that are unregistered securities. While the alleged Securities Act violations were dismissed in federal district court, the firm appealed the decision and, in April 2024, the circuit court reversed the dismissal – allowing the plaintiffs to continue to seek justice.
It’s one of several crypto wins the team has attained in the appellate courts. Goldstein, Stoughton and Coon lead a class action against Binance and its founder, alleging that Binance sold billions of dollars of unregistered digital tokens. In March 2024, the Second Circuit unanimously ruled that the action could proceed, again reversing a dismissal by the district court. In a subsequent victory a year later, the team defeated a motion to compel arbitration for Binance investors who purchased digital tokens during a significant portion of the class period.
“In this emerging area of law, these victories – especially those on the appellate level – represent decisive steps forward in favor of the ability of investors to recover billions of dollars in trading losses from crypto-exchanges,” said Coon.
The firm’s appellate work in crypto litigation spans the nation – as far as the Ninth Circuit, where Goldstein and partner Oscar Shine are leading a securities fraud class action against Dfinity USA Research LLC, Dfinity Foundation, and its founder alleging the illegal sale of digital tokens in violation of federal securities laws.
Through these cases, Selendy Gay attorneys are proving themselves to be go-to authorities in untested waters – and in it for the long haul through the inevitable appeals processes in these novel areas of law.
APPELLATE STRATEGY IN BANKRUPTCY LITIGATION
Considered appellate strategy is also foundational to the firm’s restructuring representations. Bankruptcy-adjacent litigation originates in any number of federal or state courts. Selendy Gay’s sophisticated understanding of state and federal jurisdictional interplay, as well as its considered inclusion of appellate practice when advising on bankruptcy-adjacent representation, elevate the firm’s practice in an increasingly complex and evolving litigation ecosystem. The Selendy Gay team incorporates appellate strategy into all aspects of its restructuring representations, including when advising special committees in connection with complex corporate transactions or litigation trustees whose fiduciary duties obligate them to consider and anticipate areas of risk and additional cost, to name just a few.
One such matter is Selendy Gay’s representation of The Genesis Litigation Oversight Committee on behalf of creditors who are owed crypto assets worth approximately $2.2B. The firm filed two lawsuits: one in the Delaware Court of Chancery, and one in U.S. bankruptcy court, asserting fiduciary breach, preference and fraudulent transfer claims against the Genesis parent entity, Digital Currency Group and other entities and parties.
“Our litigation and recovery strategies need to contemplate the likelihood of appeal, particularly in matters like Genesis, where we are crafting cutting-edge legal theories and potentially laying the groundwork for the creation of new law,” said Kelley Cornish, a leading bankruptcy attorney and Selendy Gay’s managing partner. “This mindset starts at the very beginning, before the suit is even filed, when we investigate potential claims and their litigation prospects through multiple levels of appeal.”
The Selendy Gay team also represents The Vesttoo Creditors Liquidating Trust in a suit seeking to hold Aon, China Construction Bank, and certain other entities and individuals accountable for fraudulent conduct that led to Vesttoo’s bankruptcy and billions of dollars in insurance losses. The scope of claims and parties involved leaves the litigation ripe for appeals, necessitating the incorporation of considered appellate strategy from the outset.
PUBLIC INTEREST, ON APPEAL
While Selendy Gay handles notable matters on behalf of creditors, corporations and other high-powered players, since its inception the firm’s attorneys have also been dedicated to litigating hot-button public policy and civil rights issues. The appellate practice is integral to the firm’s public interest and pro bono efforts, with precedent-setting victories secured in the higher courts.
“The lawyers of the firm are the kind of people who are drawn to the most complex cases,” Stoughton says. “While many of those cases are in the business sector, the commercial sector, a lot of the most complex cases are brought to us by organizations that are looking to partner with socially conscious firms – particularly firms like ours, with a strong background in the administrative and constitutional law issues that dominate many of today’s high-profile cases and frequently play out in the appellate courts.”
One groundbreaking matter Stoughton and the team worked on originated in her previous work with the Legal Aid Society. She, the attorneys at Selendy Gay, as well as the Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC, defended New York City’s rent stabilization laws against five separate constitutional challenges by landlord groups, who argue that rent stabilization is a physical taking under the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in all five cases, leaving in place the sweeping victories the firm has fought for since 2019.
“It was a broadside attack on rent regulations, and there’s a real energy behind that,” she adds. “It was a really disruptive legal claim.”
It’s a consequential matter: Not only does rent stabilization protect tenants in nearly a million apartments across New York City and many more across New York State, Stoughton explains, but the cases could have led the Supreme Court to reduce Takings Clause protections for tenants – threatening governments’ ability to protect tenants and granting more power to landlords in a way that would “destabilize housing regulations across the country,” Stoughton says.
At Selendy Gay, everyone’s depth of experience in both trial and appellate issues means that we can see that bigger picture and see through a case from the beginning to the end, including when that end means after an appeal.
In current appellate matters, the firm successfully overturned dismissal of a case representing Ecuadorian journalists and other members of El Faro—one of Central America’s foremost independent news organizations—who were the victims of spyware attacks using NSO Group’s Pegasus technology. The Ninth Circuit held that the district court had abused its discretion in dismissing the lawsuit brought by the journalists, allowing them to proceed in their pursuit of holding NSO Group accountable for the use of spyware by hostile foreign governments to spy on human rights activists and journalists.
Stoughton herself is a constitutional law expert and celebrated champion of civil rights issues. She comes to the firm from a background in government, at the ACLU and at the Legal Aid Society, where she was the attorney-in-charge of special litigation from 2020-2024, spearheading challenges to the NYPD both in regard to the department’s stop-and-frisk procedures and on behalf of protestors during the summer 2020 George Floyd protests. Ever the appellate advocate, Stoughton continued to fight this matter at Selendy Gay, defeating a police union’s motion to veto the settlement in February 2024, and obtaining a Second Circuit affirmance of the settlement’s validity in March 2025.
With a background serving as senior counsel of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, a position she was appointed to by President Barack Obama, and as one of a handful of lawyers shortlisted by the New York State Commission on Judicial Nominations for appointment to New York State’s Court of Appeals, Stoughton is one of a line of high-profile lawyers who have fought appellate matters on Selendy Gay’s team. Past members include Caitlin Halligan, who was confirmed as an Associate Judge for the New York Court of Appeals in 2023. No stranger to public service either, Judge Halligan served as the Solicitor General of New York for five years and as General Counsel to the Manhattan District Attorney for three.
Selendy Gay’s well-known investment in public service cases was a key reason Stoughton joined the firm. “That’s why I came here from an organization that represents people who do not have access to justice,” she says. “It is really felt and exhibited from the top to the bottom of this organization.”
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Simultaneously, the partners are taking on massive litigation outside the appellate courts. Following the staggering $1.1B trial victory against Johnson & Johnson in Delaware Chancery Court, the firm now represents Albertsons, one of the nation’s largest grocery chains, in a dispute against Kroger, seeking more than $6B in damages caused by a failed merger.
Across that spread of matters, in appellate courts and out, the attorneys’ trial expertise means they are always one step ahead. They approach every case with a long-range view – viewing every case as a potential appellate case.
“So many mistakes can be made by trial lawyers who aren’t thinking in appellate terms and by appellate lawyers who don’t understand trial dynamics,” says Stoughton. “At Selendy Gay, everyone’s depth of experience in both trial and appellate issues means that we can see that bigger picture and see through a case from the beginning to the end, including when that end means after an appeal.”
When that big-picture outlook meets groundbreaking creativity, the firm’s clients – from major creditors and investors to teachers and journalists – know that they have a team prepared to champion their cause the whole way through.
