James Sammataro of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in Miami. Courtesy Photo

This article profiles one of three finalists for the Daily Business Review's Attorney of the Year award, the top honor at the annual Professional Excellence Awards ceremony.

The other finalists are Kerri Barsh of Greenberg Traurig and the team of Jamie Cole of Weiss, Serota, Helfman, Cole & Bierman and Gary Rosen of Becker.

The winner will be announced during an event May 23 at the Rusty Pelican in Miami.

JAMES SAMMATARO

Stroock & Stroock & Lavan

James Sammataro was introduced to Enrique Iglesias' business manager and stayed in touch with him, offering “sporadic advise on inconsequential things.”

Time passed, and “they came to us with this concern that he was not being treated properly,” said Stroock & Stroock & Lavan's head of media and entertainment group. Under a 2010 contract with Universal International Music, streaming revenue was not spelled out.

“It was a term that maybe in hindsight should have been contemplated,” Sammataro said, adding the contract written by a Los Angeles transactional lawyer had other strong provisions. “He had some terms that were better than certainly the majority of artists.”

By 2015, Iglesias had switched labels to Sony. Sammataro was dealing with “a breakup, strong contractual terms and a principled client who only wanted what was fair.” The artist's position was his royalties from digital streaming were systematically underpaid to Universal's advantage.

Sammataro was a bit surprised no pre-suit settlement was reached and filed a breach-of-contract suit in January 2018. A notice of settlement was filed three months later, and the case was dismissed last July.

Without posturing, Sammataro said the two sides reached a confidential settlement calling for unorthodox relief, and “reasonable minds were able to carry the day.”

Although the terms were not disclosed, the streaming issue gained attention in the entertainment industry and beyond, and Sammataro's reputation was burnished. ”People have said, 'Here's a guy who worked through a thorny issue.' “ 

That never hurts, and it's an image Sammataro has been cultivating for 17 years since starting with Cooley in San Diego.

The Duke Law grad said his older law school friends were feeling miserable at New York and Washington firms, so he decided a tertiary market with something close to New York scale might work. He brought in an MP3 digital music pioneer as a summer associate and was paid an origination bonus in his second year of law school.

Sammataro was diverted to Miami for nationwide managed care litigation before U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno and sold an online medical claims processing company. His wife grew up in Key Biscayne, and the Massachusetts native made the move and now lives a stone's throw from her childhood home.

He wrote the book “Film and Multimedia and the Law” and arrived at Stroock seven years ago. As an entertainment attorney, he was attracted in part by its strong New York presence. He spends about a week a month in Los Angeles and travels to New York once or twice a month. Some of his work involves Broadway and off-Broadway productions.

Sammataro took over management of the firm's Miami office, which now has about 20 attorneys, but credits the office manager and staff for its smooth operations.

In the meantime, he's made the A List of entertainment lawyers, showing up on the Billboard and Variety legal charts.

That flows from his focus on high-value entertainment disputes for celebrities including writer-director Lee Daniels. He's also litigated cases involving Pitbull, Lindsay Lohan and the late Jenni Rivera. Sammataro benefits from a new generation of crossover artists hitting the mainstream.

On the corporate side, he represents content owners, television and radio networks and other media companies including South Florida-based Univision and Spanish Broadcasting System; Spotify; and Sony's The Orchard, which disseminates or distributes 20 percent of online songs.

In copyright infringement cases, it's common for plaintiffs to sue upstream platforms and downstream distributors as tag-along defendants to cover the industry vertically, creating opportunities for many lawyers in a single case.

“We've had lawsuits where all 15 platforms have been sued,” said Sammataro, who considers much of the inclusion effort frivolous.

His case work extends beyond intellectual property to defamation, noncompete, publicity and profit participation. On the transaction side, he handles talent, concert, content, production, syndication and distribution agreements.

“We always hustle. We're always looking for new and interesting work,” he said.