Prepared: April 11, 2026 For: Insurance carriers (coverage), co-counsel (association), expert witnesses (forensic accounting / banking), mediators (settlement) Length: 2 pages Purpose: Provide the essential facts a busy lawyer needs to decide whether to engage.
State court (active): Litman v. Goldberg, Nath Goldberg & Meyer, and Nath & Associates PLLC, Index No. 524343/2025, Supreme Court of the State of New York, Kings County. Hon. Brian L. Gotlieb, J.S.C. (reassigned from Maslow at 2/19/2026 preliminary conference).
Federal court (dismissed voluntarily): Litman v. Nath et al., 1:25-cv-04048 (E.D.N.Y.) — Lanham Act § 43(a) claim voluntarily dismissed; sanctions briefing contains admissions now used as state-court exhibits.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 6/15/2020 | SOL cutoff — the date after which commercial uses of Plaintiff's name became actionable |
| 6/14/2023 | Arbitration award; arbitrator found "NGM was created as the alter ego for its partners" |
| 7/21/2024 | Post-SOL-safe cutoff — uses after this date are strongest for SOL purposes |
| 1/14/2025 – 1/21/2025 | NGM switched Plaintiff's name off patent Line 74 to Defendant Goldberg's name (consciousness of wrongdoing + control) |
| 6/11/2025 | Goldberg's written admission of KFU accounting irregularities |
| 6/26/2025 | Federal complaint filed; Exhibit A inventoried NGM trust accounts (and excluded one) |
| 7/18/2025 | Plaintiff's firm email accounts eliminated (one day after litigation threat) |
| 7/21/2025 | State suit filed |
| 7/22/2025 | NGM drained $24,495.15 from an undisclosed third trust account at Freedom Bank of Virginia (wire memo: "NGM Bank to Bank transfer Close Account"); account closed ~7/28/2025 |
| 12/5/2025 | Court dismissed Counts I–IV; Count V survives |
| 1/20/2026 | Answer filed (NYSCEF Doc #65) — admits name appeared on patent front pages / website post-6/15/2020 |
| 4/2/2026 | Bill of Particulars due |
| 6/2/2026 | Depositions complete (Goldberg deposition outstanding — 2/24 failed appearance documented) |
| 9/22/2026 | Compliance conference |
| 2/5/2027 | Note of Issue |
Count V only: New York Civil Rights Law §§ 50–51 — statutory misappropriation of name for commercial and trade purposes. § 51 authorizes compensatory damages, exemplary damages (in the court's discretion), and injunctive relief. Counts I–IV (contract, quasi-contract, unjust enrichment, accounting) were dismissed 12/5/2025.
1. Contractual carve-out destroys the consent defense. Defendant Goldberg's own signed and recorded asset-sale and trademark-assignment agreement (Exhibit R to the federal complaint) transferred five specific service marks while expressly carving out Plaintiff's "name, signature, voice, image, photograph or likeness." Goldberg's own recorded contract excludes the very rights NGM subsequently exploited. The single recorded document defeats every consent-based affirmative defense at the contractual level.
2. Sixteen Powers of Attorney personally signed by Goldberg. USPTO records show Defendant Goldberg personally signed 16 of 21 post-6/15/2020 Powers of Attorney bearing Plaintiff's name and Customer Number. Most are post-arbitration (6/14/2023); the most recent is January 17, 2025. This is the direct causal link establishing that Goldberg "caused" Plaintiff's name to appear on post-SOL USPTO filings — contradicting the Answer's denial of causation (¶33).
3. Undisclosed trust account at Freedom Bank of Virginia (spoliation). NGM operated a third attorney-trust account (Freedom Bank acct 220001028) that was excluded from the federal-complaint Exhibit A account inventory dated 6/26/2025. On 7/22/2025, one day after the state suit was filed, NGM wired out the $24,495.15 balance with a wire memo that literally reads "NGM Bank to Bank transfer Close Account" — typed by hand into the wire instruction. The account was closed approximately 7/28/2025. NGM's own June 2025 Trust Register, printed by the firm's bookkeeper on 7/2/2025, shows the account live 19 days before suit. Plaintiff had demanded closure in writing on 2/9/2024 — ignored for 17 months, then executed in 24 hours. Active concealment, not inference. Plaintiff separately served as Chairman of the Executive Loan Committee of Freedom Bank in the 2013 period (per a contemporaneous board document), making the concealment a director-to-director betrayal by Goldberg, who had independent notice of the banking relationship.
4. 20% fee-sharing formula validated monthly with mechanical precision. A 21-month time-series analysis of NGM's own Payment Allocation Reports (Oct 2023 – Jun 2025) shows Plaintiff's fee-credit tracking 20% of firm-wide Litman-originated fees every month (mean 1.009×, standard deviation 0.025). Firm-wide Litman-originated fees totaled $8,607,872 across the 21 months, yielding a formulaic 20% share of $1,731,898. The 14 Fidelity mobile-app wire screenshots produced by Plaintiff reconcile to NGM's Payment Allocation Reports to the penny for 12 of 14 months. This defeats any "no agreement on percentage" defense at summary judgment — NGM ran on the formula monthly. Last monthly wire: May 21, 2025. After a June–September 2025 cadence gap, a single $135,947.69 wire on October 8, 2025 represented a unilateral post-suit cadence change from monthly to quarterly — itself a breach of the March 2021 "$25K/month W-2 advance" commitment.
5. Five named institutional-level goodwill clients on record. Five independently-sourced clients identified the firm by Plaintiff's name and tied retention to his personal goodwill: (a) Thomas Bennington (7/3/2025: "a customer of Richard Litman's from way back... I thought the world of Mr. Litman"); (b) Omar Albannai (8/17/2025, Kuwait: "East or west Richard is the best, you are unplaceable to me"); (c) Lev Dvorkin (9/18/2025, Israel: "I turned to your firm solely for the reason that Mr. Richard Litman works with you" — Goldberg responded "Yup. On it."); (d) Lynn Odland / Dakota Ag Innovations (10/8/2024: "Our experience with The Litman Law office was such that we are not interested in looking elsewhere"); (e) Dr. Faisal Al-Refaei / Dasman Diabetes Institute (11/12/2024). These five clients anchor the commercial-value element of § 51. Additionally, NGM's Soluno practice-management export shows 6,518 of 6,643 matters (98%) identify Plaintiff as the referral source and 99.7% list him as responsible attorney — the entire book of business traces to Plaintiff in NGM's own system.
| Anchor | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Defendant-produced 22/24-month total | $2,108,387 / $2,412,428 | NGM production (Gould/Connell Foley) |
| Plaintiff's reconstructed total (validated to within 0.4% of NGM's production) | $2,403,125.66 | Cross-checked against NGM-produced records |
| 21-month 20% fee-credit time-series | $1,731,898 | NGM Payment Allocation Reports |
Defensible anchor range: \$424,000 – \$928,000 — the unpaid balance of Plaintiff's 20% royalty (the deferred payment for the Practice). The 20% royalty share itself for the sample period is \$2,108,387 / \$2,412,428 per NGM's own Payment Allocation Reports; the \$424K–\$928K range is the portion of that royalty that NGM has not paid.
KFU-only subset (aspirational ceiling on the accounting track): \$1.98M unpaid 20% share out of \$9.89M unallocated KFU deposits across 442 underlying transactions (Jan 2023 – Nov 2024). An expanded KFU universe reconstructed by Plaintiff shows \$27.68M billed / \$24.68M received / \$2.05M presently owing, with a \$13.93M total KFU recovery target inclusive of unbilled fees and trust balance.
Statutory and exemplary damages (§ 51): Available in court's discretion for knowing use. Scienter is well-supported by the Freedom Bank concealment, the POA signatures, the 1/2025 name-switchover, and the contractual carve-out in Exhibit R.
Consequential damages: Plaintiff is presently paying \$2,867.11/month (escalating to \$2,895.54) in out-of-pocket COBRA health insurance following NGM's termination of employer coverage — recurring special damages.
Realistic settlement range: \$7M – \$15M given the combination of the \$2.4M direct pecuniary anchor, the \$13.93M KFU ceiling, the statutory and exemplary § 51 component, the Exhibit R kill-shot, and the spoliation record.
Five coordinated acts in a 40-day window around the filing of suit:
A spoliation motion under Voom HD v. EchoStar, 93 A.D.3d 33 (1st Dep't 2012), and the Zubulake line is drafted and ready for filing. Six adverse-inference instructions are mapped across these events.
Settlement-ripe today: - Liability is as clean as a § 51 case gets (Exhibit R contractual carve-out; Answer admissions; 16 personally-signed POAs; 205-patent name switchover). - Damages has multiple independent anchors all within an order of magnitude. - Spoliation record is documented, non-speculative, and coordinated in a 40-day window. - Defendant has reputational and disciplinary exposure (USPTO OED, VA Bar, DC Bar) that creates independent settlement leverage. - Plaintiff is elderly and has documented health/insurance vulnerabilities; time-value of settlement favors the defense resolving quickly.
Trial-ripe if settlement fails: - Count V § 51 elements fully met on undisputed documents. - Commercial benefit element quantifiable (\$8.6M firm-wide fees over 21 months). - Causation element closed by the 16 POA signatures and the 1/2025 name switchover. - Consent affirmative defense defeated four ways over: Exhibit R, arbitration award (alter-ego finding), BOP response ("purely as a courtesy"), and the disability record. - Personal liability secured under LLC Law § 609 / Turane v. MGN, LLC, 171 A.D.3d 835 (2d Dep't 2019), as cited in the court's 12/5/2025 decision.
On request, the following can be shared with engaged counsel, experts, or mediators under appropriate confidentiality:
All inquiries through plaintiff's counsel of record. Case materials, exhibit binder, and working product delivered on executed confidentiality agreement.
This summary contains no inflammatory language and makes no allegation that is not supported by a document in the case file. Quotes are verbatim from the exhibits cited. Page limit: 2 pages as formatted.