Thomas Plotkin, Attorney

Thomas Plotkin came to the legal profession circuitously. After fifteen years as a motion picture and television writer in Los Angeles (with several project sold and developed but never ultimately produced), and as a television executive (working for the entity responsible for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), he decided to alter his course at mid-life and enter a field where writing, communication skills, and the ability to build a persuasive narrative could be put to good use: litigation.

While at the University of Connecticut, he was the Symposium Editor at the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal, where in 2008 he assembled an all-day symposium on insurance and intellectual property, hosting patent and copyright attorneys, media liability insurers, academics and policy-makers from the United States and Europe. While at the Journal, his student note was published, " A Congregation of Vapours: Clendenin Brothers, Inc. v. United States Fire Insurance Company, Welding Rod Litigation, the Total Pollution Exclusion, the Futility of the Judicial Search for Ambiguity in Commercial General Liability Insurance Contracts, and the Reasonable Expectations of the Insured." The Note discussed the much-litigated issue of the total pollution exclusion in commercial general liability insurance policies within the context of welding rod litigation.

He has co- authored a subsequent article, arising from a research project performed for the Law School's Insurance Law Foundation, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal: "Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair:" Have Insurers Loosened the Chokepoint of Copyright and Permitted Fair Use's Breathing Space in Documentary Films? This article discusses the travails of documentary film-makers whose projects often require the use of copyrighted material such as film and television news clips and music, which are often prohibitively expensive. Fair use, enshrined in the Copyright Act, should theoretically permit film-makers to use this material without permission, but for decades, their media liability insurers, without whose coverage the films cannot be distributed, typically balked at assertions of fair use. However, in the last eighteen months, film-makers, copyright attorneys, and activists have worked with insurers to break the logjam, and the major players in the media liability insurance field have come forward with fair use endorsements. The article detailed the historical and theoretical background of the interplay of the fair use doctrine in Congress and the Courts, filmmakers experiences on the ground, and the role of insurance in film-making, as well as narrating the history of the insurers' change of heart, gleaned from interviews with the major players.

While at UConn Law, Mr. Plotkin was Vice President of the school's chapter of the American Constitutional Society. His aim was to be the conservative conscience of that honorable center-liberal organization. In 2007, he assembled a panel consisting of scholars, human rights attorneys, and legislators for a conference on prison reform issues, entitled "Incarceration Nation."

In the spring of 2008, as a participant in UConn Law's Criminal Appellate Clinic, Mr. Plotkin argued a case before a three-judge panel of the Connecticut Appellate Court, State v. Guzman.

Also while a student, Mr. Plotkin interned at the District Court in Connecticut, and enjoyed a summer job in the litigation department of Rome McGuigan, in Hartford. After taking the Bar, he has returned there as an associate. The experience has been amply rewarding, as this mid-size general litigation practice has, in six months, exposed him to a rich array of disciplines, including civil rights, employment, insurance defense, collection actions, complex litigation, matrimonial, and criminal law, as well as the opportunity to be second chair at a trial in the district court.

Mr. Plotkin spends his time with his two children, Harris and Katie, and his wife of eleven years.