Mr. Francis is a partner at Sultzer & Lipari. His practice focuses on commercial litigation and consumer class actions. Mr. Francis has litigated in state courts and federal courts throughout the country on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants and has taken both civil and criminal trials to verdict.
Mr. Francis has fought on behalf of plaintiffs in national class actions under various state consumer protection laws, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and the New York State Labor Law, including arguing a false advertising claim before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also represented corporate defendants in TCPA and wage and hour class actions, corporate contract disputes, FTC enforcement actions, as well as against various tort claims, including personal injury and asbestos litigation.
Prior to joining Sultzer & Lipari, Mr. Francis was an Assistant District Attorney in the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, where he prosecuted misdemeanor and felony cases, including driving while intoxicated, narcotics, gun possession, and assault. He tried close to a dozen cases and secured guilty verdicts in Kings County Criminal Court. Subsequently, Mr. Francis was associated with a prominent real estate litigation firm specializing in residential and commercial real estate disputes in New York City. There, Mr. Francis represented tenants, landlords, cooperative and condominium boards, and guarantors in breach of contract and tort litigations, as well as lenders and borrowers in disputes over multi-million dollar commercial real estate loans.
Mr. Francis interned for the Honorable Kiyo A. Matsumoto in the Eastern District of New York and gained experience drafting opinions concerning a wide range of federal issues. As an intern for the United States Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, he played an integral role in securing convictions in a RICO murder re-trial involving complex issues of expert testimony admissibility.
Mr. Francis attended Yale University, where he graduated with honors in Political Science. He is a 2011 graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law. His article, “The Kindle Controversy: An Economic Analysis of How the Amazon Kindle’s Text-to-Speech Feature Violates Copyright Law” was published in the Fall of 2011.
