ATTORNEYS - Stacey P. Nakasian

Practice Areas
Stacey Nakasian, a partner of the firm, focuses her practice on business litigation, including shareholder disputes, commercial lease conflicts, customer/broker litigation, director and officer liability claims, non-compete agreements and trade secret cases. Her clients include closely held corporations, professional practice groups, labor staffing companies, and real estate development and management companies. Stacey also represents beneficiaries and fiduciaries in complex estate litigation.

Stacey has appeared before state and federal courts throughout the United States as well as before numerous arbitration and mediation panels.

Work for Clients
Stacey has been retained by and regularly represents high-net-worth individuals and corporations in a variety of securities arbitrations involving fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and unsuitability claims. She successfully defended officers, directors and corporations against claims made under RICO, and obtained substantial judgments on behalf of real estate development and management companies. She has secured injunctive and monetary awards in trade secret and non-compete cases and has extensive experience handling commercial contract disputes.

• Stacey secured a $1.2 million judgment, including attorneys fees and punitive damages, in a trade secrets case tried to a jury on behalf of a manufacturer against its former employee and competitor.
  
  
• Stacey represented the Small Business Association in a substantial and complex federal receivership case in which the receivership estate?s former managers asserted a substantial claim against the estate?s assets. Through discovery and after depositions, Stacey succeeded in getting the claim withdrawn, thus preserving the estate?s assets for the other creditors.
  
  
• On behalf of beneficiaries of $500 million trust, Stacey led the briefing and argument that resulted in a court order allowing early termination of the trust and distribution of trust assets. The case made new law in Rhode Island regarding the circumstances under which a Court can deviate from the terms of a trust at the request of the trust?s beneficiaries.
  
  
• In a trade secret and unfair competition case in California Superior Court against one of the nation?s largest video publishing companies and its wholly-owned video game developer, Stacey obtained an injunction requiring the developer to turn over work product it was withholding from her client. The case, which is scheduled to be tried to a jury in March 2011, alleges that the defendants improperly attempted to withhold the work product in order to shut down a competing product. The case involves complex issues of intellectual property ownership in the context of a work-for-hire development agreement. The developer was required to post a $12.5 million bond to secure a portion of the potential damages in the case.

Professional Activities and Honors
Stacey served as law clerk to the Solicitor General of the United States and for the Honorable George H. Revercomb of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Stacey is President of the Federal Bar Association, R.I. Chapter, and serves on the Advisory Board of Roger Williams Law School. She was elected to the Board of Directors of the Visiting Nurse Service of Greater Rhode Island. Over the years, she has been active in leadership positions for Rhode Island Legal Services and Festival Ballet of Rhode Island.

Education
University of Virginia (B.A., cum laude , 1984); The George Washington University Law School (J.D., 1990, Order of the Coif); Notes Editor, George Washington University Journal of International Law and Economics, 1989-1990.

Papers and Presentations
"Proposed Amendments to the Provisions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976 Governing Execution of Judgment," 23 Geo. Wash. J. of Int'l Law 179 (1989).

Bar and Court Admissions
Pennsylvania (1991); Rhode Island (1993); U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island (1991); Eastern District of Pennsylvania (1994).

snakasian@duffysweeney.com