Arthur F. Fergenson - Columbia, MD

Overview

Arthur Fergenson litigates. From over 40 years of experience in the law, Mr. Fergenson employs what he has learned and applies it in a practice focused on appeals and major motions. With skills honed by clerkships in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and in the Supreme Court of the United States for then-Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Mr. Fergenson understands the power of ideas persuasively argued before courts of any jurisdiction. He also knows the importance of creating a record at the trial level that can protect a favorable judgment on appeal, or enhance the ability of a lawyer to overturn on appeal an unfavorable result below.

Mr. Fergenson graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Drama, summa cum laude, and as a junior year Phi Beta Kappa electee. After receiving his J.D. from Yale Law School, he served as law clerk to the Honorable Thomas P. Griesa upon his appointment as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. Both at the trial level and while a law clerk at U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Fergenson received an invaluable education in the good and bad of advocacy, both written and oral. Those lessons still inform his practice.

After clerking, Mr. Fergenson associated himself with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. While at Covington, Mr. Fergenson was part of the small team that challenged the constitutionality of federal campaign legislation ultimately resulting in the landmark decision that invalidated key limitations on the free speech rights of Americans. After teaching corporate law, federal jurisdiction, and intellectual property at Indiana University Law School at Bloomington and University of Maryland School of Law at Baltimore, he was named General Counsel of the ACTION Agency.

Mr. Fergenson returned to Baltimore to serve as a federal prosecutor in the narcotics unit, and was responsible for civil forfeitures and the prosecution of other offenses, including a violation of the Arms Export Control Act involving Iran. As a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Fergenson handled the appeals that followed from the cases he prosecuted.

Mr. Fergenson re-entered private practice in 1985, and joined Ansa Assuncao after practicing at Weinberg and Green (now Saul Ewing), Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, and DLA Piper, where he was co-head of its appellate practice. During this period, he litigated complex civil cases, large and small, throughout the country. He was counsel to major stakeholders in two of the three largest life insurance insolvencies in our country's history with billions of dollars of total claims at risk: Executive Life (litigated in California state court) and Confederation Life (in Michigan state court). See, e.g., Texas Commerce Bank v. Garamendi, 11 Cal. App. 4th 460 (Ct. App., 2d Dist. 1992); Commercial Nat'l Bank v. Superior Court, 14 Cal. App. 4th 393 (Ct. App., 2d Dist. 1993). He also helped a client pursue a major claim for insolvency loss against a state guaranty association.

In January 2011, Mr. Fergenson, as counsel of record, argued a major constitutional case before the United States Supreme Court. The issue is of major consequence to businesses: what are sufficient contacts with a state that would permit you to be sued in its courts. The Supreme Court had not considered this issue for nearly a quarter century before taking this case on the petition filed by Mr. Fergenson and the other members of the Ansa Assuncao team: J. McIntyre Machinery v. Nicastro, No. 09-1343. The Supreme Court held, six to three, that it was unconstitutional to force Mr. Fergenson's client to defend a product liability tort action in New Jersey when the client had taken no action in that state and directed no activity toward that state.

Mr. Fergenson represented a major international company in a series of cases to protect its contract rights after the dot.com collapse. In one such case before a federal jury in New York, Mr. Fergenson pierced the corporate veil to hold an investment adviser liable for the wrongdoing of a portfolio company of the fund that the adviser ran; the portfolio company had contracted with Mr. Fergenson's client and had breached, but the portfolio company was insolvent. Mr. Fergenson defended the judgment successfully in the Second Circuit, domesticated the verdict in the home state of the investment adviser, and pursued the judgment debtor through bankruptcy to an ultimate recovery. From trial to appeal to collection, Mr. Fergenson was successful.

Having litigated in federal and state courts, trial and appellate, Mr. Fergenson brings his judgment, experience, and skills to bear by identifying issues and presenting them to judges with clarity on paper and orally. His goal is to find the most direct path to success for his clients.

Mr. Fergenson is rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell. He is named a Maryland SuperLawyer for 2012.