Mark J. Wolfson is leader of the firm's Bankruptcy & Business Reorganizations Practice for the Southeast region and former chair of Foley's Litigation Department in Tampa. He has been practicing law for more than 28 years.
Mr. Wolfson has extensive experience in out-of-court loan workout and restructuring matters as well as broad experience in all types of insolvency and bankruptcy cases, representing secured creditors, creditors committees, buyers of assets in chapter 11, equity holders, bondholders, and parties to contracts such as landlords and franchisors. He has experience in state, federal district and bankruptcy courts litigating fraudulent transfer and preference actions and has been involved in state assignment for the benefit of creditor proceedings.
Mr. Wolfson has been the lead attorney on workout and restructuring engagements involving more than a billion dollars in complex real estate and corporate loans. He also has experience in real estate, manufacturing, telecommunication, technology, health care, automotive, and agriculture insolvency cases, to name a few.
Mr. Wolfson has been involved in a wide variety of complex commercial litigation cases, including but not limited to lender liability suits and other business tort actions; breach of contract cases; securities class action cases; franchise, distribution, and licensing disputes; trade secret and non-compete actions; trademark and patent litigation; and software functionality disputes.
Mr. Wolfson has been appointed by the Circuit Court of Hillsborough County, Florida, as a special master, a role in which he effectively acts as a "magistrate judge" to hear evidence, make evidentiary and procedural rulings, and render findings of fact and conclusions of law for review by a trial judge.
Mr. Wolfson has been Peer Review Rated as AV® Preeminent™, the highest performance rating in Martindale-Hubbell's peer review rating system and has been recognized by Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers since 2003. He has been selected for inclusion in the 2006-2011 Florida Super Lawyers ® lists. Mr. Wolfson was also selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America ® (2007-2012) for bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law. In 2001, Mr. Wolfson was honored by The Florida Bar Business Law Section as its Outstanding Member of the Year.
Mr. Wolfson was the 2005-06 chair of the Florida Bar Business Law Section. He also served as secretary/treasurer of the section. He therefore served on the section's Executive Committee and is a member of the section's Executive Council. He served as chair of its Legislation Committee. He has served as the chair of the Business Law Section's Bankruptcy/UCC Committee and in 1997-98 was the editor of the section's publication, The Quarterly Report. Mr. Wolfson served as the lead representative of the Business Law Section in connection with the enactment of Revised Article 9 in Florida in 2001 and was primary draftsman of many of the Florida non-uniform provisions, including those concerning default and remedies. He served two terms on the editorial board of The Florida Bar Journal and Florida Bar News. He also was chairperson of the section subcommittee which drafted the 1993 amendments to Section 697.07, Florida Statutes ("Assignment of Rents"). He has lectured and written on lender liability, fraudulent transfer, and complex bankruptcy matters and co-authored "An Analysis of the 1993 Mortgage Foreclosure Act," (The Florida Bar Journal, p. 68, October 1993).
Mr. Wolfson received his law degree from the University of Florida in 1982 and served a judicial clerkship to the Florida Second District Court of Appeals. He received his bachelor's degree, with high honors, from the University of Tennessee in 1979 and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Kappa.
Mr. Wolfson was selected to and participated in the Tampa Chamber of Commerce's Leadership 2000 class. He served as the president of Temple Schaarai Zedek, a 1000 family congregation, in 2005-07 and was a member of its board of trustees for more than 10 years.