About Marisa Bowe

Marisa Bowe Articles written 26

Marisa Bowe is a writer, editor, and producer with credits in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, New York Magazine, Slate, and PBS NewsHour, among others. She is co-editor of the oral histories Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs and US: Americans Talk About Love. She graduated cum laude from Columbia University with a B.A. in modern European history.

Articles written by Marisa Bowe

Conscience Coupling

Husband-and-wife team Randolph McLaughlin and Debra Cohen are building a new kind of civil rights practice

“She was a pain in my ass,” says Randolph McLaughlin. “You can say neck,” suggests Debra Cohen.  “No, I’m going to be frank,” McLaughlin says. Then he concedes the point: “Maybe tuchus.” The civil rights attorneys are sitting in a 27th-floor conference room at Newman Ferrara, a boutique firm near Herald Square, where they’ve been working since 2013. They’ve been married since September 2001, practicing law as a team since 1996, and the story they’re telling is how that …

New York Dog Bite Injury: Laws To Know

When personal injury attorney Pat James Crispi at Keogh Crispi was kindergarten age, he was attacked by a dog. The attack resulted in “a lot of initial bleeding but no emergency room treatment required,” and left him with strong opinions about dogs.  “When an owner has a dog and it charges at me, they say, ‘Oh, he’s just being friendly’ — since when could you read a dog’s mind?” Crispi says. Fortunately, he adds, dog bite cases in New York City are uncommon. That could …

The Zonin’ Lobels

Richard Lobel follows in the footsteps of his father, Sheldon, who followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law

Roughly a decade ago, Richard Lobel, currently the managing partner at land use and zoning firm Sheldon Lobel, P.C., was looking up some old Board of Standards and Appeals rulings for a case he was working on. “When you look at old BSA resolutions, you don’t just see resolutions relating to your property—there were typically several determinations listed on the same sheet,” he says. “As my eyes scanned the page, I noticed May 7, 1970, and then saw that my grandfather was sitting on …

Neighbor Rights During Construction in My State

Construction projects can cause noise, leave debris, and even damage your property. Neighbors should let you know about any construction projects and stay on top of their contractor to make sure the work does not cause unnecessary damage. Unfortunately, it's usually up to you to take care of problems on your property caused by a neighbor's construction project. You can contact the city or local government for building, zoning, or code violations. And for any damage to your property, you may …

Pirates of the Arabian

Lawrence Rutkowski on negotiating with men holding AK-47s

“Up until a few short months ago, my idea of a pirate was Johnny Depp,” says Lawrence Rutkowski, the 56-year-old head of Seward & Kissel’s transportation finance practice. That changed last Thanksgiving evening when Rutkowski received a phone call from James Christodoulou, the CEO of Industrial Shipping Enterprises Corp. (ISEC), for whom Rutkowski acts as general counsel. It seemed an ISEC vessel, the Biscaglia, and its crew of 28, had been hijacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of …

The Eagle Scout

Bankruptcy lawyer Deryck Palmer is nice 98 percent of the time    

In the early 1980s, Ted Berkowitz and a handful of fellow law firm associates would regularly meet over lunch, or at one of their offices, to talk about bankruptcy issues. Federal bankruptcy law had undergone a comprehensive overhaul in 1978, says Berkowitz, now of Farrell Fritz in Uniondale, "so for us, there was very little learning curve with respect to that law. The cases were only five years old. Every time there was a decision in the Southern District of New York, law was being made." In …

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