Joe offers extensive experience in multijurisdictional litigation and counseling, representing clients in state and federal courts throughout the Northeast. He frequently engages with regulatory bodies, such as the FTC, DOJ, EPA, and OSHA. Joe’s practice spans antitrust, environmental, and financial services litigation, providing comprehensive legal support to a diverse range of industries.

Joe assists clients with compliance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, guiding them through mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures. He is involved in high-profile transactions across various sectors, including health care, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. Joe offers clients strategic merger analyses and an ability to handle investigations, including those involving “second requests” from the FTC or DOJ.

In the environmental sector, Joe represents international companies in civil claims under CERCLA and state cleanup statutes, and defends against Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act violations. He also advises on energy development projects, including renewable energy initiatives such as the Block Island Wind Farm.

Joe’s financial services litigation experience includes defending national lending and servicing institutions in mortgage foreclosure and consumer finance lawsuits. He manages class actions and complex litigation involving compliance with HUD regulations and state-specific pre-foreclosure requirements.

Antitrust

• Advises clients on compliance with the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 ahead of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and other transactions, whether strategic or financial in nature in numerous industries.
• Advises clients on substantive strategic merger analyses and investigations (federal and state level), including those involving a “second request” from the FTC or DOJ. Handles numerous high-profile and cross-border transactions, including an $8 billion merger of pharmaceutical companies, numerous telecommunications transactions, and several transactions in other industries, such as cosmetics, gaming, biomedical, health care, pharmaceutical services, construction and mining equipment, and industrial and construction materials, with several transactions valued in excess of $1 billion.
• Developed a focus on and significant experience in health care merger reviews conducted by both the FTC and state attorneys general, including combinations of hospitals, physician groups, and combinations of health care insurers in the commercial and Medicare spaces, insurtech, and insurer-provider joint ventures.
• Advises clients in connection with non-transaction-related antitrust investigations by the FTC and DOJ.
• Advises clients on compliance with substantive antitrust law concerning issues, such as product distribution, discounts, bundling, tying arrangements, and “gun jumping.”
• Represents clients in antitrust litigation and represented a major bank in In re Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation.

Environmental and Energy

• Represents numerous international companies across diverse industries against civil claims under CERCLA and state equivalent cleanup statutes, whether direct claims brought by the government or contribution claims by private third parties arising from allegations concerning the institution’s historical waste disposal practices and has served on PRP group steering committees and led negotiations.
• Counsel to performing municipal PRP in connection with the closure and remediation of the town’s historic landfill.
• Represents clients in the defense of allegations of Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act violations brought by the EPA and private parties, and assists clients with compliance under those statutes.
• Counsels clients on numerous permit application issues.
• Works with energy clients on state and federal issues relating to the development and expansion of plant capacity, including state-specific energy siting compliance and management of various project phases. These include large- and small-scale natural gas and combined fuel projects, utility regulatory compliance, etc.
• Counsels energy and financial clients on renewable development and environmental compliance, including in connection with the Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first operational offshore wind farm.
• Assisted a major Boston-based generation facility with all energy and construction issues in connection with its capacity expansion project, which included the addition of a new 15 MW gas-powered turbine generator.
• Counsels clients on R.I. Public Utilities Commission (PUC) rules and regulations, and appears with clients in PUC proceedings when needed to advance the interests of generators or energy retailers.
• Served as lead outside counsel to one of the largest international energy retailers on its nationwide COVID-19 crisis management initiative.

Financial Services Litigation

• Ongoing representation of several top national lending and servicing institutions in defense of various types of mortgage foreclosure and other consumer finance lawsuits brought by borrowers in state and federal trial and appeals courts in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
• Ongoing multijurisdictional defense of multiple so-called “face-to-face” meeting cases arising under HUD regulations.
• Ongoing multijurisdictional defense of multiple so-called “paragraph 22” compliance cases involving the impact of default notice language on the borrower’s awareness of the ability to seek court intervention before a foreclosure.
• Defense of a purported class action relating to a servicer’s obligation to automatically cancel mortgage insurance premiums for FHA-insured loans in certain circumstances.
• Defense of a purported class action relating to compliance with state-specific pre-foreclosure mediation requirements.
• Defense of a purported class action arising from alleged accounting errors, resulting in alleged violations of FDCPA, RESPA, TILA, and state corollaries.
• Defense of a purported class action arising from alleged servicer failure to pay recording fees in the tens of millions of dollars statewide.
• Litigated and tried multiple loan-level cases involving common law allegations, such as breach of contract, promissory estoppel, negligent misrepresentation, and fraud allegations relating to or arising from alleged loan modification agreements, forbearance agreements, or other loss mitigation alternatives.

Commercial Litigation

• Assisted for a number of years in the defense of an international accounting and audit firm against investor suits seeking hundreds of millions of dollars arising out of funds that invested with Bernard Madoff, involving both federal securities and state common law issues in state and federal trial and appeals courts.
• Represented clients in major construction-related cases involving breach of contract, breach of warranty, and negligent construction claims, including one that involved the construction of an articulated tug barge at a Rhode Island shipyard and another involving claims of a condominium association brought against the condominium developer.

• The Best Lawyers in America®: Antitrust Law (2023-2026)
• Chambers USA: Corporate/Commercial (2022-2024); Litigation: General Commercial (2024-2025)
• Rhode Island Monthly, Professional Excellence in the Law, Antitrust Law (2022-2023)
• Super Lawyers®: New England, Rising Star (2011-2019)
• Providence Business News, 40 Under Forty (2017)