Founding Chair of the firm’s Appellate Group, Linda L. Morkan has been involved in 200+ appeals over her 35-year career, personally arguing more than 100 of them. She has appeared before the state appellate courts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court and several of the U.S. Courts of Appeal across the country.
She was admitted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers in 2008, the first woman to be admitted from Connecticut. Fellowship is an honor open only to those who have practiced as an appellate advocate for at least 15 years and possess a reputation of recognized distinction. Academy membership is limited to 500 members in the United States and is by invitation only. She has also been included in the Best Lawyers in America© in the area of Appellate Law every year since 2008.
Linda brings her persuasive talents to both her written work and her oral presentation. She has spent decades honing her skills and has dedicated much study and deliberation to the intersection of legal theory and human nature which lies at the heart of human persuasion. She delights in the new challenges that an appeal promises and has long been known as a keen collaborator, be it with her colleagues, trial counsel, co-appellate counsel, and especially her clients.
Many attorneys specialize in a specific area of law; Linda has had the opportunity to put her knowledge of appellate practice to work in many substantive areas of the law, including bankruptcy, constitutional rights, construction, contracts, employment, energy, environmental, ERISA, insurance, reinsurance, land use, real property, probate, tax, and more. Notable successes have been achieved in various areas, such as securing the dismissal of an appeal by a citizen’s group which tried to prevent the transfer of a nuclear power facility, blocking the attempts of the state department of banking to regulate the Internet activities of an out-of-state federally recognized American Indian tribe, enforcement of a view easement across a neighbor’s property to the Long Island Sound, winning the reinstatement of a multi-million-dollar arbitration award against the state of Connecticut; and defending the entry of summary judgment in favor of a builders’ risk insurer, defeating the attempts of a multi-national property insurer to expand the concurrent cause doctrine in Florida.
In addition to the representation of parties in appellate forums, Linda has also taken and defended many arbitration and administrative appeals in the lower courts, and regularly files “friend of the court” amici briefs for trade groups and interested parties.