Howard Magaliff’s practice encompasses all facets of bankruptcy and restructuring. As a consultant to distressed companies, Howard helps his clients maximize recovery and return to profitability. Advising clients as they emerge from a temporary setback, he outlines the legal rights, obligations and options for proceeding and collaborates on a strategy to reposition and renew the company’s performance going forward. Clients and lawyers routinely bring him into cases that have stalled at a critical juncture because he has a track record of concluding matters efficiently and favorably.

Howard is a commercial litigator with extensive first chair trial experience in federal district and state courts in a broad range of commercial and business matters including insurance, construction, tax certiorari, mortgage foreclosure and piercing the corporate veil. In bankruptcy court, he has litigated the settlement payment safe harbor for securities transactions, substantive consolidation, the applicability of the automatic stay to federal agencies, legal and accounting malpractice, unfinished business claims of a dissolved law firm and challenges to professional fees. He also handles appeals, has argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the New York Court of Appeals, and has written the winning briefs for several landmark cases decided by the Second Circuit.

Howard has represented domestic and international companies in a broad range of industries including the automotive, housing, real estate, energy, lumber, healthcare, restaurant, retail and electronics industries, and served as debtor’s counsel in some of the largest and most well known cases including Enron, Chrysler, General Motors, NRG Energy, Allegiance Telecom, Ames Department Stores, Loehmann’s, Guilford Mills, St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers, Frontier Airlines, Daewoo International (America) Corp., Delphi and Tower Automotive. He has also represented creditor and equity security holder committees. Howard is a chapter 7 panel trustee in the Southern District of New York, and is regularly hired as special litigation counsel to other trustees.