June 22, 2015: New York City Attorney Jeffrey A. Moerdler Receives State Bar’s Root/Stimson Award

June 22, 2015: New York City Attorney Jeffrey A. Moerdler Receives State Bar’s Root/Stimson Award

6.22.2015

By Communications Department

ALBANY—Jeffrey A. Moerdler, an attorney based in New York City, was honored with the New York State Bar Association’s Root/Stimson Award, presented by State Bar President David P. Miranda on June 20 at the Association’s House of Delegates meeting in Cooperstown.

The award, given by the Committee on Annual Award, honors an attorney for exemplary community service.

“From his volunteer endeavors as an emergency medical technician to his service on multiple boards, Jeffrey Moerdler has demonstrated an admirable generosity of time and effort,” said Miranda of Albany (Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti). “It is only fitting that the State Bar honor him with the 2015 Root/Stimson Award for community service.”

Moerdler is head of the real estate and communications practices in the New York office of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo. A general commercial real estate attorney for nearly 30 years, he focuses his practice in the high-tech, telecommunications, financial services, health care, supermarket and oil and gas sectors.

Moerdler has served as an EMT for Brooklyn-based Chevra Hatzalah Volunteer Ambulance Services, the largest volunteer ambulance corps in the United States, for 10 years. During that time, he has responded to thousands of medical emergencies, saving the lives of five individuals suffering cardiac arrest and two people choking, and even helping deliver a baby.

His EMT team responded when Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed a U.S. Airlines plane in the Hudson River in 2009. He also led Hatzalah’s response to the Metro North train derailment in the Bronx in 2013.

Moerdler is a commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and vice chair of its audit and security committees. He has also served on the New York State Banking Board, the New York State Financial Control Board and the Disciplinary Committee of the Appellate Division, First Department.

He served 27 years as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Riverdale YM-YWHA, and also served as president, among other roles. He currently serves on its President’s Advisory Council.

The award is named for distinguished lawyers Elihu Root and Henry Stimson to honor their commitment to public service. Root served in President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration as secretary of state, received the Nobel Peace Prize and was a president of the New York State Bar Association. Stimson served as secretary of war under President William Howard Taft, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry S. Truman. He also served as secretary of state under President Herbert Hoover.

The 74,000-member New York State Bar Association is the largest voluntary state bar association in the nation. It was founded in 1876.