Ballard Spahr LLP

Litigation

Partner

M. Norman Goldberger co-leads the firm's Municipal Securities Regulation and Enforcement Team. He concentrates on complex commercial matters, including securities litigation, consumer fraud class actions, restrictive covenants, derivative actions, internal investigations, False Claims Act litigation, RICO litigation, and issues relating to the availability of insurance coverage for commercial litigation matters.

Norman has represented clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 public clients in industries including financial institutions, stock brokerages, investments/securities, accounting, cable and telecommunications, real estate investment trusts, real estate partnerships, construction, engineering, equipment leasing, semiconductors, chemicals, retail, manufacturing, and hospitals and health care facilities.

Norman has worked on a wide variety of securities cases in the federal district courts and the federal appellate courts. He has also represented clients in NASD and NYSE arbitration proceedings on securities matters. Norman has also successfully defended derivative litigation as well as an important case revolving around a hospital's ownership of research information generated as a result of treatment performed on its patients. He also conducted an arbitration in which the client was awarded $16.2 million.

Norman has been involved in many consumer-fraud class action matters. He has also worked on more than 20 restrictive covenant matters and has used his experience litigating these matters to aid clients when drafting employment agreements that involve such clauses. The kinds of restrictive covenants he has encountered run the gamut from the mundane (e.g., nonsolicitation covenants that prevent poaching clients or customers of the former employer) to the complex (e.g., agreements that involve a garden leave clause requiring an employee to work from home while continuing to receive his or her usual salary and benefits once notice is given to the employer of an intent to work for a competitor).

For more than 20 years, Norman has advised clients about insurance and litigated with insurance carriers on a variety of D&O liability insurance matters. He also has performed risk analysis and due diligence for clients when selecting D&O coverage. He has also obtained coverage for clients under various policies for commercial matters when such coverage seemed at first glance to be unavailable. Norman has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and in appellate and trial courts throughout the United States.

Admissions: Pennsylvania

American Bar Association

Pennsylvania Bar Association

Philadelphia Bar Association

University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D., cum laude, 1978) Editor, University of Pennsylvania Law Review Order of the Coif

University of Pennsylvania (B.A., magna cum laude, 1975)