Daniel Markham

I have developed a diverse practice bridging the corporate and litigation worlds. I have handled scores of complex commercial litigations over disputes in a broad range of industries, including real estate, banking, fashion, mortgage lending, energy, pharmaceuticals, and retail. I have developed a thriving practice representing some of the world’s most successful fashion models in negotiating their contracts with fashion houses, beauty, fragrance, and hair care companies, and their agencies. I also regularly negotiate licensing deals for sports figures and celebrities, as well as employment and separation agreements for executives, and have litigated numerous non-compete cases.I represented Supermodel Linda Evangelista in her widely publicized lawsuit against ZELTIQ Aesthetics, Inc. Ms. Evangelista was permanently disfigured as a result of using ZELTIQ’s CoolSculpting System. In 2022, Ms. Evangelista publicly announced that she was “pleased to have settled the CoolSculpting case.” In 2019, I represented six model agents and 35 models who left Men Women N.Y. Model Management, Inc. (“Women”) for Elite Model Management – New York LLC (“Elite”). Women commenced a lawsuit against the agents and Elite in an effort to stop the move. Not only were the agents and models ultimately able to join Elite, but the Court also ordered Women to pay defendants’ attorneys’ fees.In 2000, I won a landmark appeal in the New York Court of Appeals. The decision was hailed by the New York Law Journal as one of the most influential co-op law decisions of the 20th Century. Adopting my arguments, the Court unanimously held in Biondi v. Beekman Hill Housing Apt. Corp., 94 N.Y.2d 659 (2000), that a corporate board was not liable for punitive damages imposed on one director. In a significant, cutting-edge wire fraud case, I oversaw contemporaneous litigations commenced in New York, the Middle East, and California in the successful effort by my client, a national bank, to recover monies fraudulently diverted out of its customer’s account and wired to a Middle Eastern bank. I first obtained an order from a New York court restraining the foreign bank from releasing the funds to its customer, then worked closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Secret Service, and the Department of Justice to recover them. In the first such use of the Patriot Act, the U.S. Attorney commenced a federal court action to seize funds of the Middle Eastern bank’s customer to offset the monies that had been wired to that bank. My client recovered the entire amount of the fraudulent wire.