D'Alessandro, John B.

Jonathan M. Freiman, Chair of the Appellate and Complex Legal Issues Practice Group, is a partner in the firm's Litigation Department and Art Law practice groups. He represents companies, foundations, universities, individuals and sovereign nations in complex disputes, including transnational matters.

His current representations include the defense of title to one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings against a claim that Russia nationalized it in violation of international law; representation of a university in a dispute over Incan artifacts claimed by a Latin American nation; representation of a U.S. citizen in suits involving his post-9/11 incommunicado detention without charge in a naval brig; and defense of a bank in several lawsuits involving allegations of culpability for losses caused by Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

Recent appellate victories include the successful defense for a university of a Second Circuit appeal involving a Nobel Prize winner's claim to ownership of a patent, and the successful reversal of a trial court decision in a multinational reinsurance dispute.

Mr. Freiman has written on constitutional law for Lexis, on international treaty-based arbitration in the National Law Journal, and on state supreme court case law for the Connecticut Law Tribune. He has lectured in Europe, Canada and the United States, at venues including the Federalist Society and a United Nations Expert Roundtable. He has been included in the "Appellate" category in the last five editions of The Best Lawyers in America. Mr. Freiman is ranked by Chambers USA as one of the leading litigation attorneys in Connecticut.

He founded the National Litigation Project (NLP) of the Allard K. Lowenstein Clinic at Yale Law School in 2002 with Harold Hongju Koh, teaching at Yale for five years while directing the NLP's litigation work and serving as a senior human rights fellow.

Mr. Freiman received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal, and received a Keck Foundation fellowship in legal ethics and awards from the Florida Supreme Court and the Cuban-American Bar Association. After graduation he clerked for Judge Louis H. Pollak, a former Yale Law School dean, before returning to New Haven.