Attorney Seifert

Attorney Seifert is a graduate of Trinity College, Hartford and Capital University Law School, Columbus, Ohio. He was a research assistant in products liability and criminal law. He is the recipient of the Criminal Law Book Prize. He has been practicing law in Connecticut since 1981. In October of 1987, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William H. Rehnquist, swore Attorney Seifert in to practice before the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

Representative matters include breach of contract cases, professional malpractice actions, toxic tort litigation, insurance bad faith cases, personal injury cases, probate, trusts, estates and appeals. In 1990, he successfully represented three contestants in the Ethel Donaghue will contest case, the largest will contest case ever brought to trial in Connecticut at that time. He also has been a trustee and executor of various estates over the years.

Attorney Seifert has argued successfully before the Connecticut Appellate Court, the Connecticut Supreme Court, and the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. Representative appellate decisions are: State v. Graham, 200 Conn. 9 (1986), which expanded the right to impeach witnesses; Schmidt v. Yardney Electric Corporation, 4 Conn. App. 69 (1985), which expanded employee rights to sue employers for wrongful discharge; State v. Merritt, 36 Conn. App. 76 (1994), aff'd 233 Conn. 302 (1995), which affirmed the Frye doctrine and set the precedent that horizontal gaze nystagmus testing evidence is inadmissible unless qualified by a scientific expert; Charles Black, Administrator v. Goodwin, Loomis & Britton, Inc., Maryland Casualty Company, 239 Conn. 144 (1996), a landmark bad faith insurance case which created new insurance consumer rights, affirmed the use of stipulated judgments and upheld the constitutionality of the offer of judgment statute; Walsh v. Stonington, 250 Conn. 443 (1999), a significant environmental appeal which confirmed that municipal state-regulated plants may be held liable in private nuisance for the pollution damages incurred by a small number of private citizens; and State v. Payne, 260 Conn. 446 (2002), a landmark decision in which the appellant's criminal convictions were reversed solely on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct.