Katherine M. Poldneff

Partner

Kathy is an experienced litigator who focuses her practice on complex commercial litigation and professional liability matters. Her wide-ranging experience spans cases involving a variety of complex commercial contract disputes, trade secrets and non-compete agreements, professional liability disputes, the False Claims Act and pharmaceutical pricing, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in the health care receivables industry, and  defamation. She has also handled significant injunction litigation and various employment discrimination matters at both the administrative and litigation stages.

Education & Admissions

Education

  • Vanderbilt University

    (B.A., cum laude, 2001)

  • New York University School of Law

    (J.D., 2004)
    Civil Rights Clinic, Employment Discrimination Section

Admissions

  • State of Ohio
  • State of New York
  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio

Experience

REPRESENTATIVE EXPERIENCE

  • Representing a private equity firm in a high stakes international arbitration before the ICDR, in which the Ulmer team successfully secured four highly favorable partial final awards.
  • Successfully petitioned the tribunal in the ICDR for early and expedited specific-performance relief ordering the sale of the parties’ joint venture pursuant to the terms of the shareholders’ agreement, which Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in the Southern District of New York affirmed. Telecom Business Solution, LLC v. Terra Towers Corp., 22-cv-1761 (LAK), 2023 WL 257915 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 18, 2023).
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully arbitrated and settled a complex commercial contract dispute involving the construction of a large, mixed-use real estate project.
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully settled complex contract disputes involving breach of fiduciary duty claims between and among the principals of a partnership and a limited liability company.
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully obtained a preliminary injunction on behalf of a law firm and then settled trade secret and breach of fiduciary duty matter where attorney departed from the firm and improperly solicited clients.
  • Part of the litigation team that filed injunction litigation and then successfully settled a trade secret and non-competition dispute involving an employee who left a company to work with a competitor.
  • Part of the litigation team that obtained preliminary injunctive relief on behalf of large, nationally recognized bank in connection with a fraudulent kiting scheme.
  • Part of the litigation teams defending nationally recognized law firms in professional liability litigation.
  • Part of the litigation teams that successfully settled professional malpractice claims against large, nationally recognized law firms.
  • Part of the litigation team that defended and successfully settled complex contract dispute involving claims of fraudulent inducement related to a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement and the calculation of EBITDA for an agreed earn-out period.
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully prosecuted and settled an action based on fraud, conversion, and breach of contract on behalf of a real estate development company specializing in FHA-insured, multifamily real estate projects.
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully defended pharmaceutical companies in multistate, multi-defendant pharmaceutical pricing litigations involving both state and federal fraud claims based on Medicare and Medicaid law, as well as the federal False Claims Act.
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully defended an indenture trustee bank in a multiparty fraud action in the healthcare receivables industry.
  • Part of the litigation team that successfully defended a nationally prominent nonprofit organization in a case involving the Americans with Disabilities Act.
  • Part of the litigation team that challenged a hospital disciplinary action in a sexual harassment matter and reached a favorable settlement.
  • Part of the team that successfully represented a Department of Veterans’ Affairs engineer in a race discrimination case before the EEOC and ultimately obtained a successful recovery in federal court.
  • Part of the litigation team that prosecuted and defended a number of complex commercial contract disputes.

Publications & Presentations

Presentations

  • “Maintaining Your Competitive Edge: Protecting Your Company’s Trade Secrets and the Enforcement of Non-Competes,” Northeast Ohio Association of Corporate Counsel Association (July 2014)
  • “Determining LLC Citizenship for Purposes of Diversity Jurisdiction,” Internal Firm Presentation (November 2017)
  • “Are Facebook and LinkedIn Process Servers for a New Generation? Emerging Law Regarding Service Via Social Media,” Internal Firm Presentation (February 2019)

Involvement

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

  • Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association (Women in Law Section Member)

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

  • Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association/Federal Bar Association Reach Out for Non-Profits Program
  • Greater Cleveland Food Bank (Volunteer)