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Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney

New York

2026_BM US_Recommended Firm.png
Key contacts
Founding partner: Dorothea Regal
Quick facts
Partners

10

Total number of lawyers

18

Key practice areas
Labor and employment
Dispute resolution
Firm overview

Since its founding in 1996, Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP has provided the most sophisticated counsel to clients across the country in their highest-stakes matters. The firm remains small by design, preserving a model that demands the utmost standards, personal attention, and a focus on efficiency.

HNRK lawyers bring decades of experience at leading Am Law 100 law firms and government agencies, and are recognized for excellence in commercial litigation generally, and in the specific areas of insurance recovery, employment, white collar defense, construction disputes, and the representation of public agencies.

Main Areas of Practice:

Commercial Litigation & Dispute Resolution: HNRK lawyers litigate large-scale, complex, and sophisticated matters in federal and state trial and appellate courts and arbitral forums nationwide. HNRK has successfully represented individuals and businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, in a full range of business disputes and has handled numerous matters with billions of dollars at stake. HNRK attorneys are creative and resourceful in identifying best approaches to resolve client matters and in quickly assembling effective, efficient, and tightly focused teams to address and resolve potential or actual disputes cost-effectively and with maximal benefit to the client. Among other high-profile trials, the firm recently represented plaintiffs in an intellectual property licensing dispute involving the famous Palm restaurant, resulting in a $120 million award at trial, unanimously affirmed by the New York appellate court.

Insurance Recovery Litigation & Counseling:
HNRK represents policyholders only. Beyond that, the firm places no limits on its leading insurance practice, which has secured hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars for its clients. HNRK is regularly sought out by corporate policyholders to advise and represent them in complex and valuable insurance coverage disputes. The firm is known for its ability to aggressively and creatively develop solutions to maximize clients’ insurance recoveries. Among other engagements, HNRK serves as coverage counsel to the world’s largest agrochemical company, Syngenta. The firm is also coverage counsel for high-profile individuals and has obtained coverage for clients facing headline-grabbing claims. The firm has delivered successful outcomes for clients through litigations in courts around the country, as well as through arbitrations and mediations in the U.S. and internationally, and through negotiated settlements. The firm recently won a trial in the Delaware Superior Court for Syngenta in a case implicating hundreds of millions of dollars of losses arising from thousands of personal injury claims; in a precedential decision, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s two summary judgment rulings in favor of Syngenta.

Employment Litigation & Counseling:
HNRK’s Employment Litigation & Counseling practice is unique in that its employment attorneys have significant expertise in litigation through trial and arbitration, including at administrative agencies. HNRK stands ready to further clients’ interests, whether they are startups or large multinationals, public sector or private, international or domestic. HNRK represents management clients in employment litigation involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or illegal pay practices; prosecuting or defending claims arising from restrictive covenants; and other employment-related agreements. HNRK also conducts internal investigations for company clients regarding all kinds of discrimination and retaliation claims, and its partners are members of the Association of Workplace Investigators.

Construction Litigation & Counseling:
HNRK has extensive experience counseling, litigating, and arbitrating on behalf of public and private clients in the construction, engineering, and real estate fields in matters involving project delays, change order disputes, differing site conditions, and other contract issues. This experience includes, for example, the firm’s longtime representation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York and its affiliated operating authorities in connection with its capital construction program, in addition to the firm’s representation of private contractors. HNRK’s insurance recovery practice also includes representation of policyholders in construction-related insurance claims, where insurance for alleged construction damage may be challenged by the insurer.

White Collar Defense & Government Investigations:
HNRK represents individuals and corporations facing a broad spectrum of complex government investigations, regulatory issues, and civil litigation. The successes secured on behalf of clients include favorable outcomes in cases involving internal corporate investigations of alleged securities fraud; government investigations of alleged corporate wrongdoing; and the Securities Exchange Act, Investment Company Act, Investment Advisers Act, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

HNRK is certified by the State of New York and the City of New York as a Women-Owned Business Enterprise.

Updated Sep 2025

Address:
One Grand Central Place
60 E 42nd St., 48th Floor
New York, NY 10165
Tel:+1 212 689 8808 Fax:+1 212 689 5101 Email:Contact Us Web Address:https://www.hnrklaw.com/
Rankings published in 2025
Dispute resolution
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Linked Reviews
Dispute Resolution

Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney continues to distinguish itself as a formidable force in its native New York as well as nationally. “They have some ‘Big Law’ credentials while having that kind of personal touch you can only get from boutiques,” declares a peer. Indeed, the firm’s founding partners do come equipped with experience from global juggernaut firm White & Case and have since forged ahead on building out this boutique with a high-touch approach. While the firm has some particularly strong niche areas – insurance and labor and employment, most notably – founding partners Dorothea Regal and Fredric Newman have instilled a culture that welcomes work that one partner quips is “pike law – anything that comes down the pike.” Whereas Regal represents international and domestic clients at trial and on appeal in complex commercial and insurance coverage litigation, Newman dedicates his practice to commercial trial representation.
     While Regal and Newman remain active in these matters, the torch is being passed to younger generations of talent at the firm. That includes a team representing Syngenta Crop Protection in an insurance coverage litigation filed by its primary and umbrella insurance companies in Delaware Superior Court seeking a declaratory judgment of no coverage for long-tail personal injury exposure claims made against Syngenta arising out of the manufacture and sale of Paraquat pesticide products by Syngenta and its predecessor companies. The basis for the insurers’ denial of coverage is that Syngenta’s notice of the claim was allegedly late and should have been noticed before the claim was filed against Syngenta. In August 2020, the Hoguet team secured Syngenta summary judgment on the threshold issue of the timing of the claim, which secured Syngenta $24 million in coverage. At the same time, the firm team defeated the insurance company’s pre-discovery motion for summary judgment, alleging that Syngenta made a misrepresentation in its application for insurance. A bench trial was held in October 2022 and in March 2023 – the court issued a post-trial decision that handed Syngenta a complete victory. Zurich appealed the court’s two summary judgment decisions in the Delaware Supreme Court which, in February 2024, affirmed the two summary judgment rulings. The firm team behind this matter included John Curley and Miriam Manber. This same team, along with Bradley Nash, also acted on a case, led by Regal, for this same client in an insurance coverage litigation filed by Syngenta in Delaware Superior Court against various insurance companies that issued primary and excess insurance policies to Syngenta’s corporate predecessors in the years 1971-1986—providing over $800 million in coverage—for losses arising from long-tail personal injury exposure claims made against Syngenta arising out of the manufacture and sale of Paraquat pesticide products by Syngenta and its predecessor companies. The firm’s labor and employment capacity is largely run by Damian Cavaleri, who has an active docket of matters for a novel and varied roster of clients. Cavaleri led a case for Cosmax USA and Nu-World against plaintiffs, who are a contract manufacturer specializing in beauty products, who brought an action upon the client’s breach of a contract in an attempt to recover approximately $2 million owed pursuant to the contracts. The client asserted counterclaims related to several alleged agreements that it claims were breached and resulted in lost profits as well as other damages, including fines from major retailers. Manber also works with fellow future star Helene Hechtkopf on a labor and employment matter for the New York MTA, a longtime mainstay client for the firm.

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