Prepared: April 6, 2026 Case: Litman v. Goldberg, Index No. 524343/2025 (NY Sup. Ct., Kings County) Surviving Count: Count V — NY Civil Rights Law Sections 50-51 (Misappropriation of Name)
"The Pad" is an internal spreadsheet system maintained by Nath, Goldberg & Meyer (NGM) to track all billable work completed on matters where Richard Litman is the originating attorney. It functions as a daily activity log, revenue tracker, and workflow management tool — organized entirely around Litman's professional identity.
The system existed in two phases:
Phase I (pre-January 2024): Martha Long, NGM paralegal, manually collected Pad data from incoming staff emails and, when no email was sent, researched what work had been completed. She distributed daily or periodic Pad reports to recipients including Litman.
Phase II (January 2024 onward): Following Goldberg's directive, the Pad was digitized as a shared Excel spreadsheet on Microsoft OneDrive, accessible to the entire DC office. The file was created in mid-November 2023 — five months after the June 14, 2023 arbitration decision — and stored at the following path:
Team -- Nath Law -- General/Nath Assoc/Pad/The Pad
The transition from Phase I to Phase II was communicated by Karen Van Giezen, NGM IT Specialist, in an email to the entire DC office on January 24, 2024, conveying Goldberg's directive.
The Pad spreadsheet contains the following columns, as specified in the January 24, 2024 directive:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| Date | Date work was completed |
| Docket / Case # | Internal NGM docket number |
| Client | Client name |
| Invoice Number | Invoice number (if known) |
| Action | Type of work: Search, Application, Amendment, RCE, etc. |
| Initials | Writer, Searcher, or other staff who performed the work |
| Attorney's Fee | Fee charged for attorney work |
| USPTO Fee | Government filing fee |
| Associate's Fee | Fee for associate attorney work |
| Foreign Transaction Fee | Fee for international filings or transactions |
| TOTAL | Auto-calculated column summing all fee columns (Excel formula) |
Every entry is linked to a matter where Litman is identified as the originating attorney — making the Pad itself a comprehensive ledger of Litman-branded professional activity.
From: Karen Van Giezen (kvangiezen@nathlaw.com), IT Specialist To: DC Office (dcoffice@nathlaw.com) — the entire Alexandria, Virginia office Date: January 24, 2024, 11:18:57 AM EST Subject: "The Pad" Spreadsheet
"Josh has requested the following procedure:
When you complete work on any matter where Richard Litman is the originating attorney, update the spreadsheet named 'The Pad' with the following information..."
Key details from this email:
After technical difficulties with the shared OneDrive file, Van Giezen sent a follow-up:
"Josh has given the ok to try again."
This second directive confirms Goldberg's ongoing personal involvement in and authority over the Pad system.
Eight months before the spreadsheet was formalized, Goldberg himself used the term "Pad" in correspondence with Litman. On February 13, 2023, in response to Litman's request for January financial backup, Goldberg wrote:
"Attached are all the supporting documents for the January calculations. These documents include invoices; the Pad entries for January, which show the breakout for each invoice; certain email instructions; and any other documents that seemed like they might be relevant."
This email included 58 attachments, among them 22 daily Pad reports as Excel files:
Each Pad file was accompanied by corresponding invoices and docket notices (DN-prefixed PDFs), confirming the Pad tracked real billable work on Litman-originated client matters.
On January 5, 2022, Martha Long distributed the Pad report to staff:
"Dear All, Attached are the PAD for January 3, 2022 and the relevant documents."
Litman responded: "Martha, please send me the pad through 12/31/21."
This confirms the Pad was a long-established system predating the 2024 digitization, distributed to "All" including Litman, and that Litman relied on it as his primary source of information about work being performed under his name.
In a separate email chain regarding King Saud University (KSU), Goldberg responded to a detailed status update with:
"Thank you very much for the detailed update. I have started looking through everything in your table below and it all makes sense to me. We will let you know if we have any questions as we go through this in more detail. It looks like you have some PAD entries for yourself!"
This remark reveals that the Pad was so central to NGM operations that having Pad entries was a notable and somewhat humorous occurrence — and that Goldberg personally reviewed and understood the Pad data.
"The Pad" and "the daily report" are parallel systems within NGM, both tied to Litman-originated client work.
On October 10, 2024, Litman sent an email from rlitman@nathlaw.com to Goldberg advising on KFU client engagement strategy:
"Comment: the attitude in my opinion should be to encourage client engagement. For example, if there is no email today with reminders, I would reach out and ask if they have any inquiries about particular matters. Could add to email something positive happening which will be shown on the daily report."
This email — sent 4 years and 4 months after Litman's supposed "termination," and 16 months after the arbitration decision — establishes that:
KFU itself imposed "daily report" requirements on NGM, with penalties of $500/day for non-compliance documented in the period from March to April 2024.
Litman's matters were tracked internally under Attorney Number 418 — his originating attorney code within NGM's billing system. In April/May 2025, Litman requested "a list of all clients assigned to my Attorney number 418," confirming that the firm's own financial infrastructure was organized around his identity.
The scope of Attorney 418 is documented in the firm's Trust Ledger:
The Pad was the daily operational arm of this Attorney 418 universe — tracking the work as it happened, which would later flow into trust ledger receipts and financial calculations.
Goldberg's spreadsheet system employed color coding to indicate patent status:
"Green lettering = patent granted but expired for failure to pay MF" (maintenance fees)
At least 18 patents bear this green lettering designation — meaning they were Litman-originated patents that expired under Goldberg's watch because nobody paid the required maintenance fees to the USPTO.
This is significant for multiple reasons:
Based on corroborating evidence, the Pad covered the following universe of Litman-originated matters:
| Category | Count | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Trust Ledger dockets (Attorney 418) | 2,214 | Trust Ledger report |
| Issued patents listing Litman as attorney | 905 | USPTO patent database (since 6/15/2020) |
| Goldberg journal entries across dockets | 28,503 | Financial records |
| Trust ledger authorizations by Goldberg | 54 | Financial records |
| Trademark dockets listing Litman | 245 | USPTO trademark records |
| Revenue tracked (total) | $32.7M | Trust Ledger |
| Revenue post-6/15/2020 | $24.5M | Trust Ledger |
| Collected fees post-6/15/2020 | $18.53M+ | Goldberg's financial spreadsheets |
| Known clients tracked | 633+ | RL Resp Files (client summary) |
The 22 daily Pad files attached to the February 13, 2023 email alone covered approximately 6 weeks of activity (December 16, 2022 through January 31, 2023). Extrapolating across the full period of name-use (June 15, 2020 through January 14, 2025 — the date of the last Litman-named patent), the Pad would contain approximately 1,200 daily entries across nearly 5 years.
| Person | Role in Pad System |
|---|---|
| Joshua B. Goldberg | Directed creation of the system; personally reviewed Pad entries; sent Pad data to Litman as financial backup; authorized the OneDrive migration |
| Martha Long | Primary Pad operator in Phase I; collected data from staff, researched completed work, distributed daily Pad reports |
| Karen Van Giezen | IT Specialist; communicated Goldberg's directive to digitize the Pad; managed OneDrive access; sent follow-up directive |
| Deborah Schaefer | Litman's CPA; received forwarded Pad directive from Litman, who questioned whether invoice linkage was adequate |
| Richard Litman | Received Pad reports; relied on them for financial oversight; forwarded to his accountant with concerns about completeness |
| DC Office staff | All staff directed to update the Pad when completing work on Litman-originated matters |
When Litman forwarded the January 24, 2024 Pad directive to his CPA Deborah Schaefer, he raised pointed questions:
"Shouldn't the invoice numbers always be known at this point in the work flow process? If work is sent out without linkage to an invoice, how is the firm sure that all work is being done and all work invoiced?"
"Any progress on the staff getting up to date on the invoice numbers?"
These questions reveal Litman's concern that the Pad — and by extension, the firm — was not adequately linking completed work to invoices. Work performed under his name might go unbilled, or billed work might not be properly tracked back to his origination credit. This concern proved prescient: Goldberg's own workup showed $0 in revenue for KFU and KSU despite $13.26 million in verified trust payments from those clients.
The existence of a dedicated tracking system organized around "any matter where Richard Litman is the originating attorney" destroys any argument that use of Litman's name was incidental or administrative. Goldberg built institutional infrastructure around Litman's professional identity as a business asset.
The directive came from "Josh" — not from a corporate policy, not from a legacy system, not from client instructions. Goldberg personally ordered the creation and maintenance of a system to track work performed under Litman's name, even as he argued in arbitration and litigation that Litman's relationship with the firm had terminated.
The OneDrive file was created in mid-November 2023 — five months after the June 14, 2023 arbitration decision. Goldberg directed the digitization of this system in January 2024 — seven months after arbitration. The daily Pad data extends back to at least December 2022 in documentary evidence, and the system itself (Phase I) predates that. After winning an arbitration in which he argued the relationship terminated June 15, 2020, Goldberg continued — and enhanced — a tracking system specifically organized around Litman as the originating attorney.
Every column in the Pad tracks revenue: Attorney's Fee, USPTO Fee, Associate's Fee, Foreign Transaction Fee, and TOTAL. The Pad is not a historical record or a tribute to a former colleague — it is a billing ledger. Each entry represents money earned from work performed under Litman's name.
The Pad spreadsheet has not been produced in discovery. Given that it tracks every piece of work on every Litman-originated matter with fee breakdowns, it would be the single most comprehensive document proving the scope of commercial benefit derived from Litman's name. Its non-production supports a supplemental discovery demand and potential motion to compel.
Goldberg argued to the arbitrator that Litman's relationship with the firm terminated on June 15, 2020. The arbitrator accepted that position. Yet seven months later, Goldberg directed the creation of a system whose sole organizing principle is that Richard Litman is the originating attorney on ongoing active matters. This is precisely the kind of inconsistent position that triggers judicial estoppel under New York law.
The green lettering notation reveals that at least 18 Litman-originated patents expired under Goldberg's management for failure to pay maintenance fees. The firm was tracking these patents under Litman's name, billing clients for the work, and then allowing the patents to lapse. This is both a misappropriation of Litman's professional reputation (clients trusted "their" attorney to maintain their patents) and potential independent malpractice liability.
The following should be demanded in supplemental discovery:
The Pad spreadsheet itself — the OneDrive file at Team -- Nath Law -- General/Nath Assoc/Pad/The Pad, including all historical versions and tabs.
All daily Pad reports (Phase I) — the individual daily Excel files Martha Long distributed before the January 2024 digitization, covering the period from at least June 15, 2020 through January 2024.
All emails referencing "The Pad" or "PAD" — including internal instructions, questions, and distributions.
The color coding legend — complete documentation of all color codes used in Goldberg's tracking spreadsheets, not limited to green lettering.
Martha Long's email archives — all emails to and from mlong@nathlaw.com containing Pad data, including the daily distributions to "All."
OneDrive access logs — Microsoft 365 audit logs showing who accessed and modified the Pad file, and when.
This analysis is based solely on documents in the evidence corpus. The Pad spreadsheet itself has not been produced in discovery and should be demanded.