Peter Zimroth, a partner at Arnold & Porter since 1990, is a leading litigator in products liability, commercial, securities, and white collar crime matters, having tried jury and nonjury cases and arbitrations, argued appeals at every level of state and federal court (including in the US Supreme Court), and represented clients before government and regulatory agencies, disciplinary panels, and congressional committees. Among his current pro bono cases, Mr. Zimroth represents an Islamic congregation seeking to overturn a discriminatory zoning law directed against the construction of a proposed mosque.
Prior to joining Arnold & Porter LLP, Mr. Zimroth was corporation counsel of the City of New York in the Koch Administration, the city’s chief legal officer in charge of all the city’s legal business and supervising the City’s law department of more than 500 lawyers dealing with tort and contract litigation, procurement, environmental law, healthcare, law enforcement, transportation, education issues, and legislation generally. He was the architect of the City’s law providing for the public financing of city elections, a law which has become the model for local legislation around the country. Mr. Zimroth also represented the City in the landmark case of Morris v. Board of Estimate (1989) before the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision that gave rise to New York City’s modern form of government.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Zimroth served as an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York (securities fraud unit) and as the chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan, the highest non-elected position in the district attorney’s office. He has been a tenured professor at the New York University School of Law and a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas and to Chief Judge David Bazelon of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. As a student at Yale Law School, he was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal.
Mr. Zimroth is the author of Perversions of Justice (Viking Press 1974), a book about political trials, as well as articles the Yale Law Journal, the New York Law Journal, the National Law Journal, and the New York Times on topics ranging from the attempted Staten Island secession from New York City, plea bargaining, the ethical and legal role of New York City’s corporation counsel, asset forfeiture and the right to counsel.
