A team of Davis Polk lawyers successfully negotiated a settlement for our clients, the partners of Sterling Equities, the owners of the New York Mets, their families and affiliated entities, in the Madoff Trustee Litigation.

In announcing the settlement, the Madoff Trustee stated that he has reviewed the evidence and determined not to pursue the claim that Davis Polk’s clients were “willfully blind” to the Madoff fraud.

In the settlement, the Sterling clients agreed to pay to the Madoff bankruptcy estate an amount equal to the profits withdrawn during the six years prior to the Madoff bankruptcy — an arrangement comparable to settlements reached with other good-faith victims of the fraud. These payments will be no more $162 million, and all of this amount may be satisfied by recoveries on $178 million of claims held by these clients against the Madoff estate, which have also been allowed in full by the settlement.

The Davis Polk team included partners Bob Wise, Karen Wagner, David Caplan, Brian Weinstein and Dana Seshens, senior counsel Bob Fiske, former partner Denis McInerney, associates Jonathan Martin, Alicia Llosa Chang, Andrew Ditchfield, Dave Newman, Andrew Friedman, Scott Wilcox, Rick Estacio, Lauren Howard, Elyse Glazer, Melissa King, Jon Stroble, Seth Rosenbloom, Samir Kaushal and Michael Russano, former associates Una Dean, Alex Crohn, Andrew Gehring and Dave Gunton, legal assistants Ryan Alberts and Ian Murray and former legal assistant Mike Martin.

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