Greenberg & Kaplan is a boutique law firm that was founded on July 1, 2014 by two highly experienced lawyers, James S. Kaplan and William Greenberg, with the intent of providing high quality, cost efficient legal services in the area of tax, estate and litigation in a way that other firms cannot.
James S. Kaplan, the head of the firm’s tax estate and guardianship department was for seventeen years prior to founding the firm the head of the Tax and Estates Department at the mid-size Wall Street law firm of Herzfeld & Rubin. Before that, he was for twelve and a half years Consulting Special Tax Counsel to the New York City Law Department, and counsel to Ashinoff, Ross, & Goldman, and Siller Wilk. He is a graduate of Yale College Columbia Law School where he was on the Law Review and has an LLM in taxation from New York University. He also was a tax partner at the real estate firm of Demov, Morris, & Hammerling and an associate at the Wall Street law firms of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and Cahill Gordon & Reindel. Bill Greenberg is a highly experienced litigator who has hand a number of major product liability and medical and legal malpractice case. Although the firm represents a number of major real estate developers and investment bankers in multimillion dollar tax matters, it prides itself on winning cases in representing smaller individual clients in situations that other firms would not take. Sometimes it will take matters on a modified contingency tailored to the clients’ needs where it believes the client has a just claim. For example, in one of its early cases, it took on the representation on the eve of trial a 78 year old woman in a guardianship case in Queens County, in which two other lawyers had declined representation. In that case, the recently married 78 year old woman, whose husband owned a $15 million business, was having her marriage challenged by her husband’s children from a prior marriage. After a six day trial, the firm achieved a favorable result over a much better capitalized defendant represented by a more established guardianship firm. In another case, the son of a deceased woman who was being sued by her nursing home had had two prior lawyers who were not successful in defending him against claims in the Brooklyn State Supreme Court. By opposing a proposed settlement that would have wiped out most his net worth, the firm was able to permit him to retain his house In another case, the firm took on representation for a reduced up front fee of a 68 year old woman who was the beneficiary of a $400,000 Supplemental Needs Trust controlled by her sister. The sister, who would be the beneficiary of the trust principal if she died, was refusing to give her more than $10,000 a year and the woman was having difficulty paying for her medical care. The Firm successfully brought an action in the New York County Surrogate’s Court which resulted in the Trust being dissolved and the Principal distributed in total to the woman. In all these cases it has been our experience that a willingness vigorously to litigate matters on the clients behalf where other lawyers were reluctant to do so, will achieve a favorable result. In the six and a half years they have been in business it has handled more than ten contested Guardianship matters in the State Supreme Courts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The Firm in addition handles a number of tax audits with the State and Federal authorities, and recently prevailed in a New York State residency matter, which avoided an eight million dollar deficiency where the prior representative had missed a statute of limitation, and on a number of other federal tax refund cases. It has also prevailed in a number of significant challenges to wills in the New York, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and has also defended in will contests. It also has drafted more than 100 wills and estate planning documents. It also has recently represented individual property owners in landlord tenant actions. In handling these matters, strategy and, to the extent necessary, court appearances on major matters are handled by the senior partners but, to the maximum extent possible, work is delegated under supervision to younger lawyers. Our legal staff consists of Salvatore Candela, who has been with the firm since 2015, and recently was elevated at the beginning of 2020 to the status of Junior partner. Mr Candela primarily works on litigation and tax matters. He is a graduate of New York Law School and has an LLM in taxation from New York Law School. David Horton, who joined the firm as an associate in December 2019, is a graduate of the University of Mississippi and Mississippi Law school. He assists on litigations and other matters. Susan Curtis, who recently joined the firm as counsel is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School. She has extensive experience with a number of major Wall Street Law firms including Lord Day & Lord, Shearman & Sterling and White and Case. She was counsel for four years to Proskauer Rose, and was a partner at the Midtown firms of Baer, Marks and Upham and Epstein Becker. Although primarily a pension lawyer by training, she has recently been working for the firm on certain litigations in the State courts. Caroline Kaplan, the firm’s Chief paralegal and firm administrator, has been with the firm since its inception in 2014. She is graduate of the Tisch School at NYU where she won a number of awards for television show writing. She assists with administrative matters on cases, and has formed relationships with clerks and law assistants in the New York court system in connection with court filings.