Selendy Gay PLLC

Managing Partner: Maria Ginzburg

Number of partners: 17

Number of lawyers: 69

Firm Overview: 

Selendy Gay, a premier litigation firm, is dedicated to the most challenging commercial disputes, public interest matters, and investigations. Its partners and associates have well-earned reputations for bold solutions and trial readiness.

Selendy Gay’s lawyers are trial and appellate generalists, able to take on litigation matters across an array of industries and subject areas, including bankruptcy, complex commercial litigation, securities and structured finance, corporate defense and investigations, corporate governance, and many others.

Since the firm was founded in 2018, it has maintained its focus on inclusivity and diversity. More than fifty percent of Selendy Gay’s equity is held by female partners, and more than twenty percent of the firm’s attorneys identify as LGBTQ+.

A hallmark of the firm is its even split between plaintiff and defense side work, which allows Selendy Gay to deploy winning strategies on both sides of the “v.” As plaintiffs’ counsel, the firm has pioneered claims, and even practice areas, that have recovered more than $46 billion for clients while holding institutional giants accountable. As defense counsel, the firm has won bet-the-company cases that threatened the existence of its clients’ businesses and business models, vindicated individuals in aggressive white-collar prosecutions, and counseled clients successfully in fast-moving investigations.

Central to the firm's success is its willingness to take cases to trial, when necessary. Its attorneys have tried dozens of cases to verdict in state and federal courts across the nation and arbitrated many cases through to award, often stepping in to handle distressed cases at trial or on appeal. The firm's experience brings its clients better courtroom results and better settlements because its adversaries have no doubt of the courtroom threat the firm poses.

Selendy Gay is known for its dedication to the public good. The firm’s public interest and pro bono litigation victories are as significant as those on the commercial side, and they stem from the firm’s foundational commitment to holding public interest work as equally important to commercial cases. In June 2022, Chambers recognized Selendy Gay as its “Outstanding Firm for Pro Bono in the United States.” In June 2023, Jennifer Selendy was named the “Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year.” The firm’s attorneys average 151 pro bono hours annually, compared to the industry average of 54.

Representative Experience: 

• Cerberus Capital Management, a leading private equity firm, in a breach of contract action against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), one of Canada’s largest banks. The dispute centers on two complex structured finance transactions backed by credit default swaps, CDOs, and RMBS. We argued a successful appeal in which the First Department agreed with Cerberus’ interpretation of the agreements and held that CIBC’s contrary interpretation was “unmoored” from the contracts. In December 2022, Justice Cohen resolved all liability issues in Cerberus’s favor following a two-week bench trial against CIBC. After a subsequent damages hearing and related decision that rejected nearly all of CIBC’s damages arguments, the New York Supreme Court – on February 6, 2023 – entered judgment for Cerberus for $855 million.
• Public service workers, members of the American Federation of Teachers union, in a settlement of a nationwide class action lawsuit with Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers, challenging Navient’s practices with respect to advising federal student loan borrowers on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Selendy Gay secured approval of a novel class settlement under which Navient agreed, among other things, to forgive the loans of all named plaintiffs, to enhance its practices for public service workers (teachers, nurses, legal aid workers, firemen and policemen, for example) and, in addition, to contribute millions to a nonprofit organization that provides education and student loan counseling to public service workers. Selendy Gay successfully secured a unanimous affirmance of the approval on appeal in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
• An ad hoc group of term lenders, in New York Supreme Court, alleging defendants TriMark, its equity sponsors, and several of its other lenders violated the governing credit agreement by issuing new senior debt that effectively turned plaintiffs’ first-lien debt into third-lien debt and by issuing new “super senior” debt without inviting plaintiffs to participate. Plaintiffs alleged that the credit agreement did not allow defendants to amend it without their consent or to strip them of their pro rata and priority payment rights. In August 2021, the Court rejected defendants’ motions to dismiss plaintiffs’ contract claims. In January 2022, the parties settled the case, with TriMark allowing the former first-lien lenders to exchange their debt for new “super senior” debt and to pay all lenders’ attorneys’ fees.
• Working with The Legal Aid Society and Legal Services NYC – and alongside the New York State Attorney General’s Office and the New York City Law Department – we secured multiple dismissals of constitutional challenges by several landlord groups to New York City’s rent-stabilization regime, which protects tenants in about a million apartments (half the city’s rental housing stock) and tens of thousands of apartments across the state. After winning dismissals of five suits on the pleadings, Selendy Gay and its co-counsel defended those decisions on appeal before the Second Circuit, which has now affirmed the district courts’ decisions in all five cases. In the first three cases, the Supreme Court denied the landlords’ petitions for certiorari.
• Crypto-investors in multiple class actions against cryptocurrency exchange platforms that facilitated transactions of digital tokens that are unregistered securities. In 2024, Selendy Gay secured two reversals of district court judgments granting motions to dismiss our cases against Coinbase and Binance, as well as a district court’s denial of a motion to dismiss our case against BitMEX, allowing our clients’ claims to move forward.

Practice Areas: 

• Antitrust
• Appellate
• Arbitration
• Bankruptcy & Insolvency
• Class Actions
• Complex Commercial Disputes
• Consumer & Healthcare Products
• Corporate Defense and Investigations
• Corporate Governance & Shareholder Rights
• Crypto-Assets
• Environmental Litigation
• Executive Crisis Management & Employment Disputes
• Insurance
• Life Sciences and Healthcare
• Nonprofits & Not-for-Profits
• Private Equity & Hedge Funds
• Public Interest & Pro Bono
• Securities & Structured Finance