David A. Coon

David A. Coon is a litigator specializing in complex commercial disputes, appeals, and regulatory and enforcement investigations. David routinely represents plaintiffs and defendants in New York federal and state courts and the Delaware Court of Chancery, as well as in arbitrations and federal courts around the country. He has a stellar track record of winning high-profile appeals in the Second Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court.

David has extensive experience representing investment firms and other public and private companies in high-stakes commercial disputes, including high-value contract disputes and structured products litigation. He has litigated corporate governance and fiduciary duty disputes on behalf of companies and individuals.

David frequently represents investment funds in connection with lender-on-lender disputes, which have become increasingly common as borrowers (distressed or otherwise) use such transactions to access new capital. David is a member of Selendy Gay’s industry-leading team representing lenders excluded from such deals when they seek to vindicate their rights as creditors by going to trial.  David’s deep expertise also includes representing plaintiffs in class actions and individuals in internal investigations and high-stakes employment disputes.

David is ranked by Legal500 in the area of General Commercial Disputes, was recognized in Best Lawyers’ 2024 list of “Ones to Watch” in the publication’s Appellate category, and was named to the Super Lawyers 2023 New York Metro “Rising Stars” list.

Representative Matters: 

• Mitel: Representing Mitel term lenders in New York Supreme Court, alleging defendants Mitel, its equity sponsor, the lead arranger and collateral agent of the loans, and several of its other lenders violated the governing credit agreements by issuing new senior debt that effectively turned plaintiffs’ first-lien and second-lien debt into fourth- and fifth-lien debt without inviting plaintiffs to participate. Plaintiffs alleged that the credit agreements did not allow defendants to amend them without their consent or to strip them of their pro rata and priority payment rights, and that, even if they did, defendants acted in bad faith by executing a transaction designed to strip plaintiffs of those rights. In December 2023, the Court rejected defendants’ motions to dismiss plaintiffs’ contract claims, and the litigation is ongoing.
• Trump v. Vance: Served as co-counsel to Cyrus Vance, then the Manhattan District Attorney, in a lawsuit by then-President Donald Trump asserting that the Constitution gives a sitting President absolute immunity from any form of criminal process or investigation, and therefore prohibited enforcement of a New York grand jury subpoena to the President’s personal accounting firm for financial records relating to the President and business organizations affiliated with him. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately issued a landmark decision reaffirming the centuries-old principle that “no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.”
• Crypto-asset investors: Representing a putative class of investors in a class action against Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto-asset exchanges, for allegedly offering and selling billions of dollars of unregistered digital tokens and other financial instruments to investors in violation of federal and state law.
• Markel CATCo: Represented retrocessional reinsurer of catastrophe events in a $300 million suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against D.E. Shaw, an insurance-linked security investor, which sought to unilaterally change the terms of its contract. The investor ultimately abandoned its effort to change the contract.
• Matterport: Representing the technology company and its directors in the Delaware Court of Chancery in a dispute with a former executive in connection with a de-SPAC transaction.
• Ligado Networks: Representing Ligado Networks, a satellite communications company, in a matter concerning the alleged interference by the Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration with a mobile satellite services license granted to Ligado by the Federal Communications Commission to operate within certain defined bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The complaint alleges that the license constitutes property protected by the Fifth Amendment and that the agencies’ actions are an unconstitutional taking of that property.
• American Federation of Teachers union: Represented members in a settlement of a nationwide class action lawsuit with Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers, challenging Navient’s practices with respect to advising federal student loan borrowers on Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). David and the team secured a novel class settlement under which Navient agreed, among other things, to enhance its practices for public service workers (teachers, nurses, Legal Aid workers, firemen and policemen, for example) and, in addition, to contribute millions to a nonprofit organization that provides education and student loan counseling to public service workers. Selendy Gay successfully secured a unanimous affirmance of settlement approval on appeal in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In April 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari, allowing the settlement to stand.
• National Public Finance Guarantee Corp.: Represented National Public Finance Guarantee and MBIA, who insured numerous bonds issued by Puerto Rico and its agencies, in a suit against eight major Wall Street banks to hold them accountable for inequitable conduct that contributed to Puerto Rico’s economic collapse.

Before joining Selendy Gay, David served as a law clerk for the Honorable Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  David earned his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Harvard Business Law Review and represented indigent criminal defendants in the Criminal Justice Institute clinic. Before law school, he was an analyst at a major financial services institution in New York.