Mark Rossman, Esq.
Mark Rossman, Esq.
Managing Partner – Owner
Now entering his third decade of practice, Mark has been involved in countless monumental litigation battles, earning a depth of experience in the courtroom and at the negotiating table which few can match. In 2015, he left his partnership in a prominent business law firm and formed his own firm with the singular purpose of assembling an organized, efficient, and, when necessary, lethal litigation team in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for the firm’s clients.
While Mark’s experience spans the litigation spectrum, he has developed niche practices in the areas of partnership disputes and shareholder oppression, fiduciary breach, business-to-business disputes, commercial collections, crisis management, and negotiation as a professional mediator.
Mark’s client base is varied, including individuals being oppressed or marginalized in business relationships and who require some muscle in order to level the playing field, such as, perhaps, a minority shareholder who is being choked out of the business by the controlling majority. He represents corporations and privately held businesses of varying net worth and value ranging from a fledgling start-up to well-established businesses with substantial value and a strong need for corporate governance, litigation avoidance protection, succession planning, crisis management, or partnership separation.
Mark is co-chair of the Privately Held Businesses Forum, a committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan. He is the creator of the Annual Business Law Symposium and has produced the program and presented at it each year since its inception.
Early in his career, he was named an “Up & Coming Lawyer” by Michigan Lawyers Weekly, which likened him to a “gladiator” – their words . . . not Mark’s.
Mark Rossman, Esq.
Managing Partner – Owner
“If the courtroom is a battlefield, Troy attorney Mark C. Rossman doesn’t mind affixing his helmet, strapping on his boots and grabbing a bayonet. . . [and] no matter what he handles, Rossman knows the human factor always comes first.” – Douglas J Levy, Michigan Lawyers Weekly, 11/19/2007
Mark has represented plaintiffs and defendants in dozens of oppression cases involving wide-ranging forms of relief, including corporate dissolution, buy-outs, and damages ranging from the tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars.
Mark’s versatility and abilities in very multifaceted areas of law are unparalleled. He has been voted a DBusiness Top Lawyer in the fields of business transactions and litigation, and also family law. He is the only lawyer in the State of Michigan to have ever received this election in both the family and business law categories, highlighting his propensity for dealing with and resolving conflict of the highest order. He has been named in Super Lawyers continuously since 2009, also having been voted into its prestigious Top 100 list. Early in his career, he was named an “Up & Coming Lawyer” by Michigan Lawyers Weekly.
Some of his achievements over the years: He achieved a class action settlement against a home builder on behalf of 40 homeowners for construction defects. He sued Waste Management for noxious odors, forcing the garbage empire to settle for over $18 million in cash and remediation measures. That same year, he and his former law partner secured a $1.275 million jury verdict in Federal Court for breach of an email contract. Still, in the first decade of his practice, Mark co-wrote a brief in the United States Supreme Court with the renowned practitioner, David Frederick, Esq., and won, securing a unanimous decision from the High Court which teed up a substantial settlement in an Arkansas class action against Big Tobacco. In addition to filing Supreme Court Briefs that year, Mark displayed his early penchant for managing a diversity of practice, cross-examining a cold-blooded murderer in the Oakland County Jailhouse, which experience inspired his award-winning 2015 short story, The Last Bullet. In 2012, Mark was part of a litigation team that secured the largest business law settlement reported in the State of Michigan on behalf of a minority shareholder – $13,000,000. He also procured the 13th largest recovery in a shareholder case of $4.59 million. He also challenged government overreach, suing the State of Michigan Department of Treasury in a class action for violation of the 4th Amendment prohibition against search and seizure.
Now in his third decade of practice, Mark has become one of the preeminent practitioners and authorities in the area of fiduciary breach and corporate oppression actions. He has represented plaintiffs and defendants in dozens of oppression cases involving wide-ranging forms of relief, including corporate dissolution, buy-outs, and damages ranging from the tens of thousands to tens of millions of dollars. Mark has handled these matters in trial courts around the state and all the way up to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Mark has written extensively on the subject of legal duties, rights, and obligations in the context of shareholding, partnership, and other corporate relationships. The Michigan Bar Journal published his writings on the fiduciary obligations inherent in reinsurance contracts, fiduciary duty and the partnership component, and corporate oppression.
Mark has structured the following types of transactions:
- All manner of corporate governance
- The formation of privately-held businesses.
- Shareholder and member operating agreements
- Partnership arrangements
- Commercial real estate transactions
- Stock purchase agreements
- Asset purchase agreements
- Automotive supplier agreements
- Sales representative and employment agreements
- Non-compete and non-solicit agreements
“I tell them that there are three certainties in litigation . . . First, it’s going to cost a lot. Secondly, it will take a lot of time. And finally, the outcome is entirely uncertain.”
– Mark Rossman, Oakland County Legal News, 1/19/2021
Some of Mark’s recent representative engagements include the following:
- Minority and majority members and shareholders in corporate oppression litigation and pre-litigation negotiation
- Health care entities in contract and business tort litigation
- Sellers and buyers of private business interests
- Parties to business litigation for confidential mediation services
- Owners of privately owned businesses for corporate governance creation and management
- Company and its principals accused of fraud and embezzlement and various business torts
Some of Mark’s recent litigation accomplishments include the following:
- Successfully leading pre-litigation negotiation teams in mediation, achieving millions in redemption payments
- Defending $60 Million Qui Tam against doctor-client, forcing nuisance value settlement on eve of trial
- Achieving judicially enforced shareholder redemption in Arbitration
- Litigating cases up to the Supreme Courts of both Michigan and the United States
Recent Recognition, Publication, & Presentation
- 2022
- Produced 6th Annual State Bar of Michigan Business Law Section Symposium
- Named Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly “Go-To Lawyer” for Business Law
- April 26 – interviewed on Fox2 News as a legal expert on election law
- May 10 – American Bar Association Spring Meeting in Atlanta. Presentation: “Corporate Oppression – Corporate Oppression – At Least There Are No Kids Involved.
- 2023
- Produced and Presented at 5th Annual State Bar of Michigan Business Law Section Symposium
- June 24 – Annual Young Lawyers Summit. Presentation: “Seeing Red… Flags, Herrings, and Risk”
- September 23 – Co-Authored Publication in Laches: “Franks v. Franks: Section 1489 Is Not a No-Fault Statute”
- November 13 – featured on WDIV concerning some trouble and litigation at Gethsemane Cemetery in the City of Detroit
- December 15 – featured on Litigation War Room Podcast, Episode 25: Building a Business Law Firm with Mark Rossman
- 2024
- Produced and Presented at 6th Annual State Bar of Michigan Business Law Section Symposium
- Named Michigan Lawyer’s Weekly, “Leader in the Law”
- January 29 – ICLE Presentation: Buying and Selling Distressed Businesses
- Elected to the T. McNeill Mediation Innovation Thinktank
- November 7 – Presented at Mecosta-Osceola Bar Association,. Presentation: Lawyer’s Owning Law Firms – 5 Foundational Principals of Creation, Growth and Protection
Education:
Before attending University of Michigan and graduating with honors in 1998 with a degree in English, Mark spent a year living alone in the Hoback Junction region of Northwest Wyoming. After his undergraduate and trial-by-dangerous-error wilderness survival studies, he attended Wayne State University Law School, earning his Juris Doctor, cum laude, in 2001. Mark distinguished himself in law school, earning a Silver Key Certificate for high scholarship and by winning first place in the law school’s mock trial contest.
Personal:
Mark is a lifelong resident of Southeast Michigan. Outside of his law practice, he enjoys writing fiction and poetry, snowboarding, baseball, and drone photography and videography. Mark won second place in the State Bar of Michigan’s writing competition for his fiction piece, The Last Bullet, which examines the questions and contradictions inherent in an act of vigilante justice.
Mission:
Mark was well-advised at an early age of the hard work and dedication inherent in becoming a successful attorney. His father worked at one of the greatest law firms in Detroit, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, LLP. On Saturdays, Mark would go to the office and roam the halls while his dad dictated letters, marked up hard copy contracts (no computers back then), and reviewed the new supplements to health care regulations. What strikes Mark most in hindsight was how seriously the attorneys in there, on the weekend, took their job. It was in the pursuit of that very same high-caliber law practice for which the Honigman firm is known that Mark founded his firm in 2015 and quickly partnered with the most capable, hard-working, diligent, and intelligent lawyers in order to grow the firm and provide legal services at the highest levels.