Mitchell D. Haddad, a Member of the Sills Cummis & Gross Litigation Department, serves as the Chair of New York Real Estate Litigation. He specializes in complex real estate and commercial litigation, creditors’ rights, workouts, and corporate litigation. With extensive experience, he has led numerous trials, argued appeals, and participated in arbitrations and mediations across a range of issues. Collaborating closely with clients and the Firm’s Real Estate Department, he aims to resolve potential disputes and litigation through strategic transaction management.
Mr. Haddad represents both domestic and international entities, including lenders, borrowers, real estate owners, developers, and commercial landlords and tenants. His practice encompasses prosecuting and defending complex commercial mortgage and UCC foreclosure actions, valuation proceedings, vendor-purchaser litigation, commercial landlord-tenant disputes, Fair Housing Act cases, not-for-profit and religious corporation transaction approvals, zoning, title, land use issues, mechanic’s lien litigation, general commercial torts, and partnership and corporate litigation involving real estate entities.
Since joining Sills Cummis & Gross in 2006, Mr. Haddad has handled significant real estate matters, including defending against a claim for specific performance of a long-term lease for a midtown Manhattan hotel or, alternatively, $100 million in damages. He successfully obtained and enforced a $25 million deficiency judgment after a 12-day hearing, as well as securing judgments of $95 million and $45 million for two separate lenders. He also defended a developer against a $17 million second mortgage foreclosure in Brooklyn and obtained a preliminary injunction in the Eastern District of the United States District Court to enforce a non-compete and non-disclosure agreement related to a failed corporate merger, which was upheld by the Second Circuit. Additionally, he achieved summary judgment dismissing claims for $25 million in damages related to a breach of contract and fraud in a real property development agreement and successfully defended the Eastern Section of the United States Tennis Association in several state court challenges to its election of officers and directors.
Before joining Sills Cummis & Gross, Mr. Haddad spent thirteen years at Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he led teams in foreclosures of a portfolio of commercial mortgages for a major international lender and repossessed a jumbo jet leased by an international airline in Miami, Florida. He managed outside counsel in the successful liquidation of over twenty recycling facilities across nine states on behalf of a secured creditor. Additionally, he represented a major international corporation in arbitration to determine the fair annual market rental value for a multi-floor lease, achieving a determination significantly lower than the landlord’s request. Mr. Haddad also prevailed at both trial and appellate levels in a case where the plaintiff sought easements to a private park and street in lower Manhattan, which were ultimately denied. Furthermore, he led a team that secured over $24 million in a judgment related to a Boston development and represented a group of institutional lenders in a foreclosure of membership interests in a limited liability company operating a power generating facility in Connecticut.
