Chad Harlan, Esq.

PARTNER

Chad Harlan is a Partner of the firm and Chair of its Litigation Practice Group. For more than a decade he has tried, argued, and resolved real estate and commercial disputes for corporate and individual clients.

Owners, sponsors, landlords, and condominium and cooperative boards retain Mr. Harlan when a property dispute arises, and often before it does: governance fights, sponsor and construction defect claims, commercial and residential landlord-tenant proceedings, partition actions, and contract and deposit litigation. That work takes him regularly into the New York State Supreme Court, the Civil and Housing Courts of the City of New York, the Appellate Division, and the federal district courts of New York and New Jersey. In Castellotti v. Free, he briefed and argued the appeal that revived a complaint dismissed in its entirety, obtaining a widely cited holding that quasi-contract claims may proceed notwithstanding an oral agreement void under the statute of frauds.

Mr. Harlan began his career in real estate, bankruptcy, and appellate litigation, and went on to build litigation departments at several New York firms. He founded and led Timmins Harlan PLLC, a New York litigation boutique, before joining Chaves Perlowitz Luftig.

His approach to disputes was shaped away from the courtroom. After earning an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Mr. Harlan took that training directly into the market, underwriting commercial litigation investments as a quantitative analyst for institutions at the forefront of the litigation finance industry.