Indian-origin lawyer in Strauss-Kahn's defence team
Wednesday, 28/03/2012
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/us-canada-news/Indian-origin-lawyer-in-Strauss-Kahns-defence-team/articleshow/12452759.cms
An Indian-origin lawyer is part of the defence team of embattled former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn who is fighting to have a civil lawsuit against him in a sexual assualt case dismissed.
Amit Mehta, along with William Taylor and Hugh Campbell, is defending Strauss-Kahn in the civil lawsuit filed against him by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo in a Bronx court here.
Diallo has accused Strauss-Kahn, a one time French presidential hopeful, of raping her in his luxurious hotel suite last year.
Mehta presented Strauss-Kahn's case before Bronx Supreme court judge Douglas McKeon arguing that the case be dismissed as his client enjoyed diplomatic immunity, akin to that extended to a UN Secretary General, in his capacity as head of a multilateral organisation.
According the Mehta's bio published in the legal periodical National Law Journal, the 39-year-old is a partner at Washington law firm Zuckerman Spaeder.
He had helped Strauss-Kahn defeat criminal charges in the sexual assault case in New York state court.
The bespectacled lawyer was part of the defence team that won an acquittal for the former president of the Salt Lake City Olympic Bid Committee against federal charges of racketeering and fraud.
He was also the primary brief writer for former Representative Tom Feeney in a case at the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2009.
Mehta had a five-year stint as a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia before rejoining Zuckerman in 2007.
