Mr Lewis Nathan Brown | Private Law Practice

Gilbride, Heller & Brown, P.A. was formed in 1975, and has handled a wide range of complex commercial litigation in state and federal courts throughout the United States.

Lewis N. Brown, one of Gilbride, Heller & Brown's principal shareholders, has specialized in defending accountants, attorneys, corporations and their officers and directors for the majority of his professional career. Mr. Brown is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Miami School of Law, and has been a trial lawyer since 1979.

Mr. Brown has been lead defense counsel in numerous shareholder class actions, bondholder class actions, shareholder derivative litigation, professional malpractice cases, SEC investigations, SEC civil enforcement actions, SEC administrative proceedings, grand jury investigations, and bankruptcy-related litigation on behalf of such clients as KPMG LLP, the former Coopers & Lybrand, LLP, the former Price Waterhouse &  Co., the merged PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Andersen, LLP, various, public and private corporations, and their officers and directors. Mr. Brown has also represented clients in securities and broker/dealer litigation in federal and state courts, the National Association of Securities Dealers, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and the American Arbitration Association.

Mr. Brown's record in representing clients in these types of cases is unrivaled. In civil litigation cases involving professional firms he has defended since 1987, Mr. Brown has won every case with two exceptions. Those two cases involved settlements, one of which was for $600,000.00, or less than 10% of the client's reserve for the case, and the other, a bondholder class action, which was settled in its early stages for $15,000.00. A jury later returned a $17,000,000 verdict against the remaining defendants. Some of Mr. Brown's victories include a KPMG case which involved a claim by the parent of a property and casualty insurance company which was seeking $45 million in damages as a result of the involuntary liquidation of an insurance subsidiary by the State of Florida. The case was dismissed on dispositive defense motions, and judgment entered in favor of KPMG. That case was affirmed on appeal. See GFN Corp. v. KPMG Peat Marwick, 820 So.2d 944 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002) (reh'g and reh'g en banc denied), rev. denied, 842 So.2d 843 (Fla. 2003). Likewise, in a case brought against PricewaterhouseCoopers by a bankruptcy trustee for a public subprime finance company, a final judgment in PwC's favor was entered on a dispositive motion and the case was affirmed on appeal. See Barbee v. Price Waterhouse, LLP, 743 So.2d 1099 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999). In Bernstein v. Worker's Compensation Medical Centers, Inc. et al., 755 So.2d 141 (Fla. 4th DCA 2000), Mr. Brown represented a public corporation and its board of directors in a shareholders derivative action which was dismissed on a substantive motion and affirmed on appeal.

Mr. Brown has also represented his professional clients, as lead counsel, in cases which were pending in the Southern District of New York. One such example was a bondholder class action case filed against KPMG before Judge Lawrence McKenna. Judge McKenna granted a motion to dismiss on the statute of limitations and the case was appealed to the Second Circuit where it was affirmed. Mr. Brown wrote appellee's brief and handled oral argument for not only KPMG, but also co-defendants Paine Webber and Merrill Lynch.  See In Re General Development Corp. Bond Litigation, 800 F. Supp. 1128 (S.D.N.Y. 1992); Menowitz v. Brown, 991 F.2d 26 (2d Cir. 1993).

Since large corporate financial failures often result in collateral litigation, Mr. Brown has represented both witnesses and targets in SEC investigations, and parties to the Commission's civil enforcement actions, and Rule 102(e) and 21(c) administrative proceedings, as well as preparing witnesses for appearances before grand juries.

Mr. Brown possesses an intimate working knowledge of generally accepted auditing standards and generally accepted accounting principles, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the related Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Mr. Brown has also worked with some of the leading economic experts in the country including Lexecon and National Economic Research Associates. Likewise, he has retained members of various national, regional and local professional firms to act as expert witnesses on issues regarding the defendant's standard of care, tax issues and matters related to damages.

As an attorney with a reputation for successfully trying large complex commercial cases, Mr. Brown and Gilbride, Heller & Brown, P.A. offer the national, regional and local client not only a prominent local presence, but also outstanding trial skills and superb written product. Through this effort, both Mr. Brown and the firm enjoy an excellent reputation with state and federal judges on all levels. Mr. Brown has been appointed and is serving on the Peer Review Committee for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, which is a committee appointed by judges sitting in the Southern District.