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Diogenes P. Kekatos
Diogenes P. Kekatos is a partner of the Firm. Mr. Kekatos is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Civil Division of the Southern District U.S. Attorneys Office who focuses his practices primarily on complex federal litigation. He is also a highly accomplished appellate attorney, having argued over 120 appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Mr. Kekatos graduated from Columbia University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, having completed a double major in History and Political Science and earned Dean's List honors each semester. He earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School (J.D., 1983), having completed internships with the New York Regional Office of the Securities & Exchange Commission and the late United States Magistrate Ruth V. Washington.
Following stints in private practice and at the New York Regional Counsel's Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Kekatos served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1986-88, and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1988-2000, where he was Chief of the Financial Litigation and Immigration Units. As an AUSA, Mr. Kekatos handled an extensive and varied caseload, including complex and class action lawsuits in a variety of areas, including immigration, employment and age discrimination, extradition, debt collection, judgment enforcement, Social Security, Veterans benefits, Freedom of Information Act, and tax liability. As an AUSA, Mr. Kekatos further prepared and argued innumerable district court motions and tried multiple cases to verdict. He further argued over 120 appeals and motions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Few, if any, attorneys in the country have practiced as extensively in the Second Circuit.
Both Mr. Kekatos' district and appellate advocacy resulted in numerous published opinions. Among them, is his successful defense of the deportation proceedings stemming from the mass smuggling of hundreds of Chinese nationals into the United States aboard the vessel "Golden Venture" (Zhang v. Slattery, 55 F.3d 732 (2d Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1176 (1996)); his successful handling of an expedited appeal of a preliminary injunction, in a nationwide class action, that challenged the enforcement of a VA disability benefits statute on Equal Protection grounds (Disabled American Veterans v. U.S. Dep't of Veterans Affairs, 962 F.2d 136 (2d Cir. 1992)); and, perhaps most notably, his successful arguing of an en banc rehearing-in a court that rarely grants full court rehearings-in an extradition case involving an accused Irish Republican Army member, which resulted in a 10-2 decision reversing the ruling of a divided panel that had declared the 1986 Supplementary Extradition Treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder (In re Extradition of McMullen, 989 F.2d 603 (2d Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 913 (1993)).
Mr. Kekatos' handling of many hundreds of appellate mediations earned him the distinction of a highly unusual letter of commendation written by the Second Circuit's Staff Counsel to United States Attorney Mary Jo White, as well as a commendation from Attorney General Janet Reno. In addition to these distinctions, Mr. Kekatos earned various other honors as an AUSA, including the Director's Award for Superior Performance and a commendation from U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White for exceptional achievement. He was further nominated for the Attorney General's John Marshall Award for Handling of Appeals and for Participation in Litigation, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys Director's Award for Outstanding Work in Financial Litigation, and for the Federal Bar Associations Younger Federal Lawyer Award by then U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani.
As a Seeger Weiss LLP partner, Mr. Kekatos handles complex and class action litigation in both state and federal courts across the country, in such diverse areas as ERISA, civil RICO, consumer fraud, environmental, antitrust, and mass tort litigation, with a particular concentration on class certification issues. Mr. Kekatos was one of the lead attorneys in In re Delta Air Lines, Inc., which consisted of several pension benefit actions against Delta that were centralized in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Georgia for pretrial purposes. In that litigation, the firm served as lead counsel on behalf of active and retired Delta pilots and who challenged various pension plan provisions and methodologies as violating both ERISA and the pilots’ pension plans. Mr. Kekatos helped secure a nationwide settlement that, notwithstanding Delta’s difficult financial condition, provided for $16 million in additional pension benefits and other relief to both retired and active Delta pilots.
In addition, Mr. Kekatos spearheaded the extensive briefing, at both the trial and appellate court levels, of the motion to certify a Vioxx-related nationwide class action against Merck, brought on behalf of all non-governmental health plans that paid for their members' Vioxx prescriptions, and which asserts claims under the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act to recover losses incurred in purchasing the now-withdrawn painkiller for their health plans. On March 31, 2006, the New Jersey Appellate Division unanimously affirmed Judge Carol E. Higbee’s July 29, 2005 certification of the lawsuit to proceed as a nationwide class action. International Union of Operating Engineers Local No. 68 Welfare Fund v. Merck & Co., 384 N.J. Super. 275 (App. Div. 2006). The plaintiff and class representative, International Union of Operating Engineers Local No. 68 Welfare Fund, a labor union health plan, alleges that Merck engaged in widespread and systematic concealment of information about the cardiovascular safety risks of Vioxx. The suit represents the biggest single Vioxx-related litigation brought against Merck. Along with Seeger Weiss partners Christopher A. Seeger and David R. Buchanan, and associate James A. O’Brien III, Mr. Kekatos obtained the certification of the nationwide class against Merck’s spirited challenge and successfully defended it on appeal. The matter is currently before the New Jersey Supreme Court, where extensive briefing by Seeger Weiss in response to the array of briefs filed by Merck and several pharmaceutical industry and other business groups has been completed. The case is awaiting the scheduling of argument, which is expected sometime in early 2007.
Mr. Kekatos is admitted to practice in New York, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
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