Daniel Ginzburg likes to say his solo legal practice in central New Jersey consists of “me, my Dropbox account, and my laptop.”
He’s taking that modest work setup to the Supreme Court, where he’ll try to convince the justices that a monetary judgment entered against a Coney Island auto parts company must be vacated because a court that issued it lacked personal jurisdiction.
Whereas arguments are now dominated by lawyers with years of experience before the justices and firms with armies of associates to handle its prep, Ginzburg will be by himself when he enters the courtroom for the first time on Tuesday.
He said he turned away a handful of Big Law firms that approached him as he considered petitioning the high court. They included Lisa Blatt, a top litigator at Williams & Connolly who’s racked up more than 40 wins in the 54 cases she’s argued before the Supreme Court and is instead arguing opposite Ginzburg in the case.
“I had no idea who she was,” said Ginzburg, 45, whose job largely consists of financial services litigation and semi-frequent appearances at state and federal courts in New York and New Jersey.
He said he rejected big firms’ offer to work with him on this case because he thought this one “had a shot, and I didn’t want to give up the opportunity to argue before the Supreme Court.”
“Ever since law school it was viewed as a big deal,” Ginzburg said. He added he doesn’t see his lack of experience as an issue in a case such as this one, which turns on few facts and a specific legal issue that “only a civil procedure geek would love.”
That legal issue stems from a default judgment a Tennessee bankruptcy court entered against Coney Island Auto Parts Unlimited Inc. over $48,696 in outstanding invoices owed to Vista-Pro Automotive, a Nashville-based firm that in 2014 commenced bankruptcy proceedings.
Ginzburg argues the judgment must be set aside because the court lacked jurisdiction over the company and therefore issued it through defective means.
But the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said motions over void judgments must be made within a “reasonable time” and Ginzburg’s client failed to. Such a finding is at odds with every other appeals court, Ginzburg said, and served as the vehicle to get the justices to take up the matter.
‘Go The Distance’
Ginzburg grew up in New York after emigrating with his family from the former Soviet Union in the 1980s. He knew he wanted to be a lawyer early on, and he earned his J.D. from St. John’s School of Law before bouncing between a handful of law firms in his first decade as a practicing attorney.
He decided to strike out on his own in July 2016, partly because he had a gig as an “outside in-house counsel” for a tech firm that provided an initial revenue base.
He began representing Coney Island Auto Parts in 2020 after a friend referred him to a case where the firm was being sued for unpaid rent. Amid that litigation, the company sought additional help from Ginzburg after a court-appointed trustee in the Vista Pro bankruptcy served a subpoena on its bank, which led the bank to place a nearly $100,000 hold on its account, according to court records.
In the years since, Ginzburg pursued a litany of unsuccessful appeals challenging the judgment, to the point where he agreed to field the case on a contingency basis.
Blatt, who’s now representing the bankruptcy trustee, didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a brief submitted in September, she argued the plain text of the federal rules of civil procedure says attempts to vacate judgments over a lack of personal jurisdiction must be made within a “reasonable time.”
The brief also said the trustee got to work immediately after being appointed in 2015, and that Ginzburg’s client has only itself to blame for “waiting seven years to complain about improper service.”
Ginzburg, for his part, said he continued pursuing the case because “I wanted to win,” and that at some point during the appeals process, “I thought, this might go the distance.”
Now that it has, he’s reading the case law and briefs again and again. Law professors at St. John’s also helped him conduct a moot court session to prep him for what he said will be an “amazing professional honor.” Even so, he acknowledged the reward for prevailing may yet be more litigation.
“Even if I win,” he said, “all that gives me is a trip back to bankruptcy court.”
The case is Coney Island Auto Parts v. Burton, U.S., 24-808, 11/4/25.
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