Bernard Nussbaum

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In 1962, he was sworn in as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, in the office led by Robert Morgenthau. He was a federal prosecutor for more than three years and tried a number of major criminal cases. These included convicting, after a four-month trial, five officials of a federal savings and loan association of perjury. The perjury was committed by the bank officers to cover up the diversion of over $250,000 from the savings and loan association to finance a political campaign for Congress being conducted by the president of the association. He also won a jury verdict convicting a prominent accountant and investor of bribing and conspiring (with other major investors) to bribe an internal revenue agent.

In 1966, Nussbaum joined the New York law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, one year after the firm was founded in January 1965 by Martin Lipton, Herbert Wachtell, Leonard Rosen, and George Katz, four lawyers in their early 30s who in time became preeminent in the legal profession. In 1966, the firm had less than 10 lawyers. As of 2022, it has over 250 lawyers and is one of the most successful corporate law firms in the United States.

In 1968, Nussbaum ran for a seat in the New York State Assembly. In a close contest, in a Democratic primary election in Brooklyn, New York, he lost to the incumbent assemblyman.

In 1970, Nussbaum managed Robert Morgenthau's campaign for Governor of New York. He led a group of former assistant United States attorneys in conducting a statewide petition drive to place Morgenthau's name on the Democratic Party primary ballot for the party's nomination for governor, opposing Arthur Goldberg, the former Supreme Court Justice, who was the choice of the Democratic Party leaders.

In a short period of time, well over 15,000 signatures of registered Democrats were collected in over 50 New York counties, with the requirement that there be at least 100 such valid signatures in each county. Many of the upstate counties in New York had few residents and even fewer registered Democrats. This made the petition drive difficult. However, it succeeded and Morgenthau began his primary race against Goldberg. A third political party, the Liberal Party, then decided to give its nomination to Goldberg. This decision, which would have had the effect of splitting the vote against the incumbent governor, Nelson Rockefeller, if Morgenthau won the Democratic primary, made it virtually impossible for Morgenthau to defeat Rockefeller in the general election. Morgenthau therefore withdrew from the primary race. Goldberg ran as the Democratic/Liberal candidate against Rockefeller in the general election and was defeated.

In 1972, Nussbaum represented Elizabeth Holtzman who, in a surprise victory, had defeated senior U.S. Representative Emanuel Celler, who at the time was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, by a little over 600 votes in the Democratic primary election. Celler brought suit in a Brooklyn state court to set aside that victory. Nussbaum won that case, which was ultimately decided by the New York State Court of Appeals, and Holtzman's election was upheld. As a result of that victory, Peter Rodino, a senior congressman from New Jersey replaced Celler and became chairman of the Judiciary Committee which later successfully conducted the impeachment inquiry involving U.S. President Richard Nixon.

In the mid-1970s, during New York City's fiscal crises, Nussbaum represented the Comptroller of the City of New York. At the time the comptroller, along with the mayor and the city, were the subject of an investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission into whether there was fraud in the sale of city securities. After a lengthy inquiry, during which numerous documents were produced and top city officials testified, there was no finding of any wrongdoing.

While in private practice he also served as a member of the adjunct faculty of Columbia Law School, conducting a seminar in trial practice for third year law students.

Later career

Over the years, as a senior litigation partner at Wachtell Lipton, Nussbaum represented clients such as major corporate entities, law firms, law firm partners, government officials, political figures, and the judiciary.

Working together with his firm's partners and associates, Nussbaum was the lead trial lawyer in many cases tried in various state and federal courts around the country, including significant corporate cases won by his firm. Among the cases he took on were representing United Technologies Corporation in defeating an antitrust suit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and Carrier Corporation in a New York federal court which sought to prevent United from acquiring Carrier. He represented the Hilton Corporation in a Nevada federal court and obtained an injunction preventing ITT Corporation from blocking a takeover effort. He won a judgment in Delaware Chancery Court on behalf of IBP Corporation ordering Tyson Foods to consummate a multi-billion merger between IBP and Tyson, which Tyson had agreed to but was seeking to avoid. In a South Carolina state court he defeated an effort by Jack Kent Cooke to take over Multimedia, Inc. a local owned broadcast and newspaper enterprise.

In 2004, Nussbaum won a jury verdict in a New York federal court on behalf of the developer of the rebuilt World Trade Center, Larry Silverstein, against major insurance companies. After a trial lasting more than a month, the jury found that the September 11 attacks in 2001, when two towers were struck by two planes, was not a single event, as claimed by the insurance companies, but was, under the terms of the insurance agreements then in force, two separate events. This significantly increased the insurance payments due and resulted in a multi-billion payment to the developer for the rebuilding of the center.

In the course of his career, Nussbaum was asked to represent major law firms (including Sullivan and Cromwell and Shearman and Sterling) in lawsuits brought against them or certain of their partners. Their suits were resolved in favor of his law firm clients.

He represented a senior partner of the Simpson Thacher law firm who was charged with diverting fees owed to the firm. His client ultimately pleaded guilty and cooperated with law enforcement authorities. After lower court hearings and an appeal, a prison term which had been imposed was set aside and his client was not required to serve any time in prison.

In 1992, in a case which generated one of the most prominent legal ethics controversies of the decade, Nussbaum represented the law firm of Kaye Scholer. A government agency sued Kaye Scholer charging it with improperly withholding damaging information about its client, a large federal savings and loan association whose failure epitomized the savings and loan disaster in the early 1990s. The law firm vehemently denied it did anything wrong in representing its client; it maintained it had an obligation to represent its client zealously and not to disclose information harmful to its client.

At the outset of the lawsuit, the government froze all the assets of Kaye Scholer. This freeze rapidly put the firm close to collapse. It made it virtually impossible to contest the government's action as the firm would likely not survive in the interim as clients and employees would depart. At this point Nussbaum was retained to represent Kaye Scholer. In less than a week, a settlement was reached which did not require an admission of wrongdoing by the firm and provided for a monetary payment over time which was covered by insurance. This enabled the firm to continue as a law firm.

As a result of judicial salaries in New York being frozen for more than a decade (the legislature refused to raise judicial salaries unless its own salaries were raised and the Governor of New York refused to agree to legislative salaries being raised), Nussbaum represented the Chief Judge of the State of New York and the Judiciary of the State, without fee, in successful constitutional litigation ultimately decided by the state's highest court, the New York State Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals ruled that holding judicial salaries hostage to legislative salaries was unconstitutional. As a consequence, the Legislature and the Governor agreed to change the system for the compensation of judges. Since then, decisions regarding judicial salaries are made every four years by an independent commission rather than by the executive and legislative branches. Salaries of state court judges have been significantly increased to approximate the salaries of federal judges, which, before the lawsuit was brought, were considerably higher than state court judges. They are now roughly equal.

On January 28, 2011, Nussbaum sent a letter to President Barack Obama stating that while serving as White House Counsel he extensively reviewed the Jonathan Pollard file. After pleading guilty in June 1986, Pollard was sentenced to an unprecedented life sentence for providing classified information to Israel without the intention to harm the United States. In his letter to President Obama, Nussbaum wrote: "Pollard has been appropriately punished for his conduct, and a failure at this time to commute his sentence would not serve the course of justice; indeed, I respectfully believe it would be a miscarriage of justice." After serving 30 years in prison, Pollard was granted parole and was released from prison on November 20, 2015.

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