Michael D. Ehrenstein

Ehrenstein|Sager

Mike is a creative, strategic, and highly disciplined warrior lawyer, happiest in the fight to advance his clients’ interests. Mike’s approach to trial is heavily influenced by his deep martial arts background which provides clients unique technical, tactical and strategic options to win. Through three decades of trial practice, Mike developed the refined judgment to choose the right option at the right time: to confront an adversary with overwhelming force, use a party’s momentum against him, or exercise equanimity to seize opportunity from disaster. As a true martial artist, Mike operates with disarming calm, confident in his ability to destroy when necessary, and content to be underestimated by adversaries with little actual trial experience. His martial arts background offers a philosophical and practical under-pinning for trial work that one-dimensional litigators lack. He is a most courteous and yet most dangerous lawyer. If you are in the fight of your life in court, you want Mike on your side.

Mike’s small but concentrated trial practice delivers high energy and remarkable results. For example, applying one martial arts maxim (“apply the most effective weapon to the most vulnerable target”), Mike obtained dismissal of claims against an African nation arising from a power generation dispute. In that case, a global energy firm engaged in the business of design, installation, service and operation of power plant systems hired a large US law firm to sue the Republic of Angola in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The plaintiff claimed that Angola failed to pay in excess of $52 million due for operation and maintenance of two of Angola’s power plants. Relying on its firm’s reputation and intimidation tactics, plaintiff aggressively threatened Angola with prejudgment attachment of local assets and a premature effort to obtain summary judgment. Rather than capitulate, Angola engaged Mike. In close coordination with local counsel for Angola, Mike quickly and completely avoided the lawsuit by applying the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (the most effective weapon) to establish the jurisdictional infirmity (the most vulnerable target) of the plaintiffs’ claims. As a result, Mike successfully persuaded the plaintiff to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit.

As he did for Angola, Mike has applied martial arts wisdom to benefit his clients throughout his legal career. He has defended clients from hundreds of millions in liability exposure, and captured extraordinary recoveries for clients involved in a wide range of disputes, from aircraft engines to agriculture, from architects to attorneys’ malpractice claims. While Mike has tried cases in numerous substantive areas, his concentrations include international disputes, energy, aerospace, transportation, professional malpractice, real estate, construction and healthcare. A summary of some of Mike’s other noteworthy outcomes is included under the discussion of industry expertise here.