Dentons Gets Arbitration Awards Affirmed in Row with Ex-Partner

A dispute between Dentons US LLP and ex-partner Jinshu “John” Zhang over a $35 million fee was properly ordered to be heard by an arbitrator in New York, a state appeals court ruled on Thursday.

The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division indirectly affirmed emergency orders issued by an arbitrator, including an award to Dentons for $60,000 costs, in connection with a $35 million contingency fee Zhang earned while working at the firm. Dentons accused its former equity partner of engaging in “self-dealing” by securing a huge portion of the award for himself.

The ruling comes less than two months after a California appeals court sent a separate-but-related suit in the dragged-out dispute back to New York for arbitration of key issues, including which topics are subject to arbitration proceedings. Various proceedings were brought to litigate the same issues, in part due to disagreements about proper venue.

In a three-page ruling with unanimous consent, the N.Y. appeals court affirmed a trial court’s judgment, which itself affirmed the arbitrator’s emergency awards and granted the firm’s motion to compel arbitration. The arbitration awards included the rejection of jurisdictional challenges, court records indicate.

Zhang raised “no basis for overturning the challenged emergency interim arbitral awards or reversing the court’s grant of the petition to confirm those rewards,” according to the ruling.

The case was before Justices Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, Jeffrey K. Oing, Anil C. Singh, Peter H. Moulton, and Manuel J. Mendez.

Zhang is represented by Wollmuth Maher & Deutsch LLP. Dentons is represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The case is Dentons US LLP v. Zhang, N.Y. App. Div., No. 2021-03143, 12/29/22.