NY Court Stays Lawsuit Against Greenberg Traurig Real Estate Head

A unanimous appellate panel in New York has issued a stay of the lawsuit NAMA Holdings LLC v. Greenberg Traurig, pending resolution of a substantially similar arbitration proceeding pending in California. The lawsuit accuses Robert J. Ivanhoe, chairman of Green Traurig’s New York office and head of its real estate group, of breaching his fiduciary duties to clients he represented in connection with the development of World Market Center, a multi-billion-dollar real estate project in Las Vegas.

NAMA, a Nevada company, sued Ivanhoe and Greenberg Traurig in April 2008 on behalf of itself and Ivanhoe’s client, Alliance Network LLC, of which NAMA is the principal investor. The lawsuit contends that while Ivanhoe was representing clients regarding the development of World Market Center, he took a personal stake in another competing project called Blue Diamond Venture.

In the pending California arbitration, Alliance is suing NAMA over failure to meet a capital call. The New York court determined that, “in the interest of judicial economy,” the lawsuit should be stayed pending the arbitration, due to overlapping issues that would largely resolve or moot many of the claims in the lawsuit.

Ivanhoe and Greenberg Traurig claim that NAMA’s lawsuit “is and always has been without merit and was a transparent attempt to avoid the proper and fair resolution of this matter between the actual parties to the dispute in the arbitration venue to which they are bound.”