Richard Levy

Richard Levy, Jr. is a member of Pryor Cashman’s Bankruptcy, Reorganization Creditors’ Rights, Litigation, Banking Finance and Investment Management Groups. He is experienced in all phases of Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 bankruptcy cases, related litigation and dissolutions under state law.

Rich counsels and represents business and individual clients in reorganization and liquidation matters. His work regularly involves bankruptcy- and insolvency-related counseling, corporate, commercial and real estate transactions and intellectual property licensing.

Rich appears in federal and state courts representing clients in commercial, business and insolvency-related litigation, including the defense of fraudulent transfer and preference avoidance actions. He is also a certified mediator in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

In addition, Rich represents creditors and debtors, official and unofficial committees of unsecured creditors, landlords, indenture trustees, labor unions, pension funds and asset purchasers in federal bankruptcy cases and litigation proceedings around the country. He also advises individuals, family partnerships, trusts, large and small companies, landlords and lessees, business owners and operators, and asset purchasers.

Employing a collaborative approach, Rich works closely with his Pryor Cashman colleagues to help structure business and commercial transactions, including financings, mergers and acquisitions, asset securitizations, intellectual property licenses, real estate purchases and leases, and other contracts. He regularly provides counsel on bankruptcy issues in business and financial transactions and prepares or oversees the preparation of the firm’s nonconsolidation opinions, true sale opinions and opinions regarding eligibility for bankruptcy, and frequently drafts or comments on contract, lease and license provisions affecting clients’ remedies and options in the event of a counterparty’s bankruptcy.

As a bankruptcy litigator, Rich has been at the forefront of one of the highest-profile and longest-runningcases in history: the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC under the federal Securities Investor Protection Act (SIPA). He leads the firm’s team in representing a group of the broker's former customers named as defendants in the SIPA Trustee's clawback litigations filed in 2010 to recover fraudulent transfers and preferences under federal and state law. Rich argued and won the Second Circuit appeal that resulted in the Court’s 2014 decision limiting the SIPA Trustee’s avoidance remedies in more than 600 lawsuits only to certain transfers made within the two years preceding the liquidation case, and prohibiting the Trustee from invoking longer state law reach-back periods that would have intercepted more than $1.8 billion in transfers. In addition to litigation efforts, Rich has participated in mediations and hardship negotiations in connection with efforts to seek consensual resolution of the claims against certain clients. He continues to represent the defendants in a number of clawback cases.