Stacey Lara
Partner
Overview
Stacey Lara is a real estate capital markets attorney in Holland & Knight's New York office. Ms. Lara has extensive experience handling complex commercial and real estate litigation and appeals in state and federal courts.
Ms. Lara represents financial institutions, lenders, investors and servicers in connection with commercial real estate loans and the exercise of remedies, including judicial and nonjudicial foreclosures, receiverships, judgment enforcement and collection matters. She routinely represents lenders and servicers in connection with loan modifications, workouts and note purchases and sales. She also defends lender liability actions concerning claims related to breach of contract, fiduciary duty, fraud, misrepresentation, predatory lending, and loan origination and servicing practices. Ms. Lara's experience includes regulatory counseling and investigations, and providing compliance advice and risk assessments.
Additionally, Ms. Lara is well versed in litigating cases involving the federal securities laws, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate governance.
Prior to joining Holland & Knight, Ms. Lara was an attorney at a New York-based real estate law firm.
Representative Experience
- Represent lenders, servicers and trusts in commercial foreclosure proceedings
- Secured dismissal of federal class action asserting wrongful foreclosure and alleged violations of mortgage-backed securities agreements
- Represented a lender in Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) foreclosure sale of membership interests in borrower entity
- Represent servicers in connection with workouts, modifications, loan payoffs and sales of distressed properties
- Defended a global financial services company in litigation seeking to require the repurchase of a pool of securitized loans
- Represented the lender and servicer in federal and state court actions alleging breaches of representations and warranties in pooling and servicing agreement, and servicing agreement
- Represented financial institutions in connection with defending against claims of fraudulent conveyance in the bankruptcy proceedings
- Defended a corporation and its senior executives in a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) enforcement proceeding, and in related state and federal class and mass actions concerning the alleged manipulation of the copper futures markets and violations of antitrust laws
- Represented financial institutions that served as underwriters in the securities class actions, including investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO)
- Represented a financial institution in securities and shareholder litigation concerning subprime debt
- Represented a financial institution in securities class actions concerning the underwriting and issuance of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS)
- Defended the former chief financial officer (CFO) of a leading international insurance organization in action brought by the New York attorney general and related federal class actions alleging participation in a scheme to falsely inflate the company's loss reserves
Credentials
- St. John's University School of Law, J.D.
- New York University, B.A., cum laude
- New York
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
- U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York
- U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York
- U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York