(Washington, DC)—David I. Shapiro, a prominent Washington, DC lawyer, and co-founder of the law firm now known as Dickstein Shapiro LLP, died Thursday, October 1, 2009 in London, England. He was 81 years old and lived in London, England. The cause of death was a heart attack.
Mr. Shapiro was born on June 17, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the University of Wisconsin and Brooklyn College and from 1944 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Naval Reserves. Following completion of his naval tour, he pursued a legal career at Brooklyn Law School and received his L.L.B. in 1949. As a Solicitor Advocate, he enjoyed higher rights of audience in the Courts of England and Wales and also was admitted to the bars of New York (1949), the District of Columbia (1958), and the U.S. Supreme Court (1955).
Mr. Shapiro began practicing law in 1949 and, with Sidney Dickstein, co-founded the firm in New York City in 1953. They opened a Washington, DC office in 1956, which later became its principal location. For more than 50 years, Mr. Shapiro used his diverse legal experience to direct the firm, helping it grow from two attorneys to some 400 attorneys in Washington, DC, New York City, and Los Angeles.
In the early years of his legal career, Mr. Shapiro was one of the youngest attorneys to ever appear before the U.S. Supreme Court, successfully arguing loyalty-security cases pertaining to both federal employees and members of the military services. In 1956 and 1957, he was director of the Loyalty-Security Defense Education Program of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and spent several years in the early 1960s attempting to break the “Hollywood Blacklist.”
In 1960, David successfully defended the First Amendment rights of George Lincoln Rockwell, Commander of the American Nazi Party, subjecting himself and his family to vehement attacks from some quarters. His civil liberties work evolved into a landmark antitrust case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963, Silver v. New York Stock Exchange, which upheld the right of a securities dealer to challenge, under the Sherman Act, his exclusion on loyalty grounds from essential wire connections with exchange members.
Mr. Shapiro focused his practice on major antitrust issues, serving as chief counsel for some 20 states and other governmental entities in a number of complex cases. He is generally credited with having invented the consumer class parens patriae and “fluid recovery” concepts in the antitrust litigation field. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Bureau of National Affairs’ Antitrust and Trade Regulation Report and chairman of the ABA’s National Institute on “New Techniques for Resolving Complex Litigation.”
Mr. Shapiro also served as chief litigation counsel for several major corporations, professional associations, and labor unions involved as plaintiffs or defendants in private and government antitrust and other complex litigation. His significant representations included serving as chief settlement counsel for important breast implant litigation, as Settlement Master in asbestos and “Agent Orange” litigation, and as the court-appointed Examiner in major airline bankruptcy proceedings.
Mr. Shapiro’s wide-ranging distinctions and professional activities also include membership in the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, the Commercial Court’s Working Party on ADR; the Panel of Distinguished Mediators and the Law Society’s Commercial Mediation Panel; and accreditation as a mediator by CEDR (Britain’s Centre of Dispute Resolution). He served as Chairman of The Panel of Independent Mediators, as Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators, as Director and Chief Mediator of JAMS Endispute Europe, and as Visiting Fellow, Department of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science, where he taught dispute resolution. He organized and was lead speaker for, “Introduction of ADR,” part of the Judicial Studies Board’s Stage 1 seminars for more than 800 judges in England and Wales, and he was an ADR consultant to the Supreme Commercial Court of the Russian Federation.
Mr. Shapiro is survived by his wife of 29 years, Carolyn, five children from his previous marriages, Steven Shapiro, Claudia Taskier, Anthony Shapiro, James Shapiro, and Miles Shapiro, and many grandchildren.
Dickstein Shapiro LLP Dickstein Shapiro LLP, founded in 1953, is a multiservice law firm with more than 400 attorneys in Washington, DC, New York, and Los Angeles. The firm’s clients include more than 100 of the Fortune 500 companies, start-up ventures and entrepreneurs, multinational corporations, charitable organizations, and government officials. Dickstein Shapiro’s core practice groups—Antitrust & Dispute Resolution, Business & Securities Law, Corporate & Finance, Energy, Government Law & Strategy, Insurance Coverage, and Intellectual Property—involve the firm in virtually every major form of counseling, litigation, and advocacy. For additional information, please visit dicksteinshapiro.com.
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