A partner in the Litigation Department, a member of the firm's Management Committee, Co-Chair of the firm’s Professional Liability Practice Group, and the firm’s Chief Ethics Counsel, Gerry Harper concentrates in general commercial litigation and counseling, with an emphasis on complex contract and other business disputes, fiduciary and corporate relationships, and professional liability involving the law of lawyering. He has litigated and tried matters and argued appeals in federal and state courts in multiple jurisdictions and tried matters in a variety of domestic and international alternative dispute resolution proceedings.

Among other matters, Gerry Harper has litigated:

• securities class actions, derivative suits, bondholder actions, and tender offer claims, both in New York and Delaware;
• extensively on behalf of lawyers and law firms, including some of the nation’s best-known law firms, in legal malpractice suits, disciplinary proceedings, and sanctions motions;
• claims in telecommunications; insurance and reinsurance; environmental management; biotechnology; M&A transactions; joint venture interests; fashion franchises; and petrochemicals;
• controversies involving theatrical productions; cable, network and syndicated television programming; barter advertising; corporate sponsorships; and home video and mail order distributions;
• disputes involving protection of music and other content-related matters in the music and film industries, including representation, at one time or another, of each of the major music distribution companies, the major film distribution companies, leading music publishers and film producers;
• antitrust and trade regulation matters include defeating a Robinson-Patman Act claim at trial, a government challenge to copyright licensing practices, various copyright and trademark infringement claims, and termination of the famous Paramount consent decrees governing theatrical exhibition of films; and
• disputes involving major New York real estate properties, including representation of the Empire State Building in a series of landmark cases.

Gerry has been involved in a number of high-profile litigations involving government matters, including representing then-Governor Mario Cuomo in challenges to his executive authority; representing the New York Democratic delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives in redistricting litigation in 1992; defending the New York State Comptroller in successfully challenging pension rules; and the New York State Thruway in unsuccessful challenges to its public financing and to the institution of E-ZPass toll booths.

Gerry is a member of the First Department's Departmental Disciplinary Committee. He has twice served on the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, once as its Secretary (1980-81), and also as a member of its Committee on Professional Discipline. He served for seven years, four as Chair, of the Professional Ethics Committee of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, and is a long-time member of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the New York State Bar Association. He was named to the firm’s ethics committee upon his election to partnership in 1986, and for twenty years beginning in 1991 was the committee’s chair until the firm created the position of Chief Ethics Counsel for him in 2011.

From 1987 until 2010, Gerry served as General Counsel of the New York State Democratic Committee and as a member of its Executive Committee. He was a Presidential Elector in 1988 and 1992 and a member of the Rules Committees at the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Democratic National Conventions. He is a founding director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy, which promotes the election of women to New York State and local office.