The Newark office comprises approximately 50 lawyers who serve a number of Fortune 500 companies locally, nationally, and abroad. Lawyers include former presidents of New Jersey federal and county bar associations; a former Associate General Counsel for the United States Environmental Protection Agency; a former board member of the International Trademark Association; a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers; a New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce board member; the current chairperson of New Jersey Law Journal’s Editorial Board; and an adjunct professor of law for Seton Hall University School of Law.

The Newark office contributes significantly to a number of K&L Gates’ leading practice areas, including health care, insurance coverage, products liability and toxic tort, environmental, labor and employment, intellectual property, regulatory, litigation, real estate, financial services, and construction. The office's litigators represent clients before federal and state courts, as well as a wide range of federal and state administrative agencies in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania in complex litigation, environmental, employment, and intellectual property matters.

The 2011-2012 edition of U.S. News-Best Lawyers® ranked our Newark office as a Tier 1 firm in five practice areas, including Administrative/Regulatory Law, Employment Law – Management, Environmental Law, Insurance Law, and Labor & Employment Litigation.

Our environmental team has been at the forefront of emerging issues, including brownfields restoration, natural resource damages, and environmental justice, as well as in developing community outreach projects to gain local support for manufacturing operations and related environmental permitting. Additionally, the team has been instrumental in developing innovative case management techniques for multi-party cases and has successfully negotiated consent decrees and other settlements with federal and state governments containing precedent-setting provisions.

The environmental team favorably settled a complex environmental matter for a multibillion dollar global company, resulting in a full recovery of the government's share of responsibility at fifteen plants around the country that the government commandeered for military purposes. The team was appointed as outside counsel to a leading New Jersey trade association on Site Remediation Reform Act related issues. Additionally, it has continually received tier-one rankings from Chambers USA, and recently earned a first-tier ranking in the 2011-2012 edition of U.S. News-Best Lawyers®.

Newark’s complex litigation practice focuses on the representation of corporate and individual policyholders in insurance coverage disputes, as well as defense of product liability, toxic tort, and construction matters. Lawyers in our insurance coverage practice have successfully represented clients in actions against insurance companies relating to a wide range of claims, including environmental site remediation stemming from property damage, bodily injury and property damage from asbestos and silica exposure, pharmaceutical and other product liability, and construction accidents and manufacturing events, as well as employment practices and directors and officers liability coverage. Representations include winning a major insurance fraud case on behalf of a hospital client against New Jersey’s largest health insurer; obtaining a motion to dismiss on behalf of a financial institution in a putative class action alleging breach of contractual agreements related to loan and mortgage modification programs; appealing and winning a major insurance case in the Supreme Court of New Jersey on behalf of a global manufacturer (after the prior law firm lost the motion in Superior Court), and obtaining a $200 million settlement with insurers to avoid our client providing an equity interest to a bankruptcy trust.

Our public policy and regulatory lawyers understand the legal landscape in New Jersey and advise clients on policies, proposed legislation or regulations that might affect them. Our team has extensive experience working with policy makers and coalitions, and often manages legislative, regulatory, funding and other priorities for clients in New Jersey. The team earned a Tier 1 ranking in administrative and regulatory law in the 2010 and 2011-2012 U.S. News-Best Lawyers® rankings .

The Newark office is also heavily involved in the defense of toxic tort and product liability cases, including the representation of clients with mass tort exposures. Attorneys in our Newark office are experienced in litigating all stages of product liability and toxic tort cases from pleadings through trial and appeal, in single plaintiff – single defendant cases, litigation involving dozens of plaintiffs and hundreds of defendants, nationwide class actions, and regional or national coordination of mass tort litigation. Our Newark toxic tort team has on staff a technical specialist who advises the team and our clients on complex technical and science issues. Our team defended a multibillion-dollar industrial manufacturer in a national “toxic mold” litigation and in personal injury actions brought by hundreds of plaintiffs; serves as trial counsel to handle litigation for a global pharmaceutical company’s osteoporosis product line; and serves as litigation counsel to handle several product liability and premises cases in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut for global products company.

Our labor and employment team is continually ranked as a leading New Jersey employment practice by Chambers USA, including our litigation team which was awarded a Tier 1 practice ranking by the 2011-2012 U.S. News-Best Lawyers®. Our labor and employment lawyers counsel management on workplace policies and practices. We also represent employers in litigation, including class action litigation, concerning a wide variety of issues from discrimination to wrongful termination. Our matters range from single-plaintiff cases and class action litigation to US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission actions challenging company-wide and nationwide policies. The Newark employment lawyers also regularly appear before the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, and the New York State Division on Human Rights. We represent a transportation agency in a number of employment cases filed against it, including cases alleging employment discrimination and violations of constitutional rights. Additionally, we successfully represented a well-known casino client in the New Jersey Supreme Court, establishing new and favorable standards for retaliation claims under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

Complementing K&L Gates’ strong firmwide experience in the intellectual property field, the Newark intellectual property team advises clients in clearing, obtaining, licensing, and assigning intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, and copyrights as well as performing due diligence with respect to intellectual property rights involved in merger and acquisition transactions. The team also represents clients in federal and state court litigations concerning trademark and service mark infringement, patent infringement and validity, interpretation of licensing contracts, and general unfair competition matters. Further, the team has been involved in several trademark infringement suits in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Representations include obtaining a stay in the federal court in New Jersey in a patent infringement case for a leading U.S. technology distributor, and obtaining a domain name from a cybersquatter (through a dispute resolution proceeding) for a multibillion dollar cosmetics company, which comprised the company’s main trademark.

Our health care team advises clients on regulatory compliance, entity formation and restructuring, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, fraud and abuse issues, corporate governance, and legal and ethical issues associated with religiously based health care services, among others. We successfully represent health care service providers in actions against health insurance companies wherein providers are seeking to collect for underpayment of out-of-network health care services. We also defend providers in connection with claims of fraudulent billing practices. As an example, our team is currently defending a fraud claim by a major New Jersey health insurance carrier, and prosecuting a counterclaim against the insurer for substantial underpayment (out-of-network charges for medical services).

Our real estate practice focuses on land use, commercial and retail leasing, conveyance and financing transactions, real estate tax appeals, and real estate related litigation. Our real estate attorneys routinely appear before the planning and zoning boards of municipalities throughout the state, have tried numerous land use cases in the New Jersey Superior Court, and regularly argue tax appeal cases before the New Jersey Tax Court and numerous County Tax Boards. Representations include vacating ordinances adopted by a city in Northern New Jersey that paved the way for the seizure via eminent domain of a 100-acre tract of land, successfully defending a landlord’s summary judgment motion and negotiating a favorable settlement leading to a global fast food chain’s acquisition of a property, and obtaining a ruling in the New Jersey Superior Court, Law Division that a condominium association cannot sue a developer for violations of the New Jersey Planned Real Estate Development Full Disclosure Act.