516-747-0300 x139
rlippe@meltzerlippe.com
Richard A. Lippe
Counsel to the Firm Richard Lippe was cited by Long Island Business News as one of the top twenty technology leaders and also one of the top 36 lawyers on Long Island. He was appointed by Governor Pataki to the New York State Science, Technology and Academic Research Advisory Council. Areas of Practice:
Admitted to the Eastern and Southern Federal District Courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States |
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General Counsel to venture funds, software companies and other technology companies.
Substantial legal experience in corporate, shareholder and other commercial litigation.
Named by Long Island Business News as one of the top 36 leading lawyers and one of the top 30 technology leaders on Long Island.
Leading the Corporate and Technology Law Groups, Richard has extensive experience with public offerings, private and venture financings, mergers and acquisitions and other corporate and securities law matters. He has been responsible for complex federal and state litigation, municipal and zoning work, and the representation of art galleries, artists and non-profit organizations.
Richard's public offerings include a California-based community bank and many New York City and Long Island based companies. Richard was the lead attorney in the initial public offering of Long Island-based Arbor National Holdings, Inc (NASDAQ). He continued to serve as counsel and a member of the Board of Directors and Compensation Committee of this leading public mortgage banking company until it was purchased by Bank America. Dick also acts as counsel to investment bankers and venture capitalists in New York City and Long Island.
Richard was a member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Compensation Committee of the Raytech Corporation, (New York Stock Exchange) until it was taken "private". Meltzer Lippe represented the company in this transaction. He has also served on the board of many Long Island-based companies including: Arbor Commercial Mortgage, LLC (financial services) and the Collaborative Group, Ltd. (biotechnology-based provider of manufacturing and product sales to the biopharmaceutical and healthcare industries). He is the Managing Trustee of Keene, Raytech and U.S. Minerals Asbestos Settlement Trusts with total assets in excess of $150 million.
Richard has substantial legal experience in the computer software industry. He served as outside General Counsel to Long Island-based Cheyenne Software, Inc. until it merged with Computer Associates International Ltd. His responsibilities included representing Cheyenne in both domestic and international mergers and acquisitions. He was a founder, General Counsel and a member of the Board of Directors of the Long Island Software and Technology Network (LISTnet). Richard was also a member of the Board of Directors and General Counsel to the Long Island Life Sciences Initiative (LILSI).
To assist financing high technology companies, Richard was one of the founders and first Chairman of the Long Island Angel Network. He also served as a member of NYSTAR - a state agency responsible, in part, for funding industry and educational high technology initiatives.
Richard has engaged in significant shareholder and corporate litigation cases. He was co-lead counsel in a successful class action brought against Teledyne, Inc. in connection with its squeeze-out of minority shareholders in Continental Motors which, at the time, was a large publicly-listed company on the New York Stock Exchange. Richard was co-lead counsel in a shareholder's action which was successfully settled against Faberge, Inc. in connection with the claim that it had disseminated false and misleading earnings projections. He was plaintiff's counsel in an action brought against American Honda that prevented it from terminating the distributorship of its largest motorcycle franchise. In another case, after trial Richard was successful in securing a preliminary injunction under the Lanham Act from the Federal Court in New York on behalf of a major company in the vitamin and food supplement industry. The Federal Court granted extraordinary preliminary relief to the firm's client by requiring the defendant to disseminate "corrective" letters to a large number of distributors and retail stores located throughout the country.
During 1965 through 1968, Richard served as Deputy Nassau County Attorney. His immediate superior was Jack. Weinstein, County Attorney, who subsequently became the Chief Judge of the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York. Richard was actively involved in the reapportionment litigation in New York State, investigations by the State Investigation Commission, and helped secure more than $2 million in funding from the federal government for the Nassau Law Service Committee, Inc., the first anti-poverty law office established in New York State outside of New York City. Richard served as an officer and director of that organization for a number of years.
For more than twenty years, Richard served as Village Counsel to the Village of Great Neck Plaza. He has had significant responsibility for zoning and related legal activities. He has also been involved in a large number of municipal litigations and has prepared a wide variety of local laws.
An avid collector of art, Richard represents several art galleries and artists in New York City. He is the General Partner of Contemporary Art Consortium and the President of Contemporary Art Publishing Consortium, Ltd., an art mutual fund and a related art publishing company. Many of these artworks are displayed throughout the Meltzer Lippe offices in Mineola.
Active in the community, Richard is a member of the Acquisition Committee of the Heckscher Museum. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Huntington Hospital. He served for more than ten years as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Stony Brook Foundation and a member of its Investment and Real Estate committees. He also served as a member of the Board of Trustees and chairman of the Business Advisory Council of the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art. He is a patron of the Krasner-Pollack House, where he helped establish the former home of Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner as a museum and study center with the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Richard has been both an Honoree, and a Co-Dinner Chairman for the Coalition on Child Abuse and Neglect.
Richard lives in Woodbury, Long Island, with his wife, Camila, and son, Michael. He is also the proud father of grown children, Wendy, who has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and practices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David who has a Ph.D. in Mathematics and a Masters in Computer Science and works for The Medallion Fund in East Setauket, Long Island, New York. Dick is a sports enthusiast and enjoys biking, skiing and basketball.
