Tina L. Brozman (October 7, 1952 - June 26, 2007) was a former chief judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York and co-leader of Bingham McCutchen’s financial restructuring group. Brozman retired from the bench in 2000 to join Bingham.
In 1985, aged 32, Brozman became the youngest bankruptcy lawyer appointed in the Second Circuit. During her time on the bench, she issued more than 150 decisions, many of which had a major impact on bankruptcies involving multinational corporations.
Brozman was a judge on the 1991 bankruptcy case of the British company Maxwell Communication Corp., the former parent of the New York Daily News. The work involved significant proceedings between New York and London, and Brozman’s cooperation with Lord Hoffman of England's High Court helped define the standard for multinational bankruptcies.
The United Nations later adopted polices Brozman set out in that case for its model law on cross-border insolvencies. The Chapter 15 addition to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in 2005 also was based on Brozman’s work in the Maxwell insolvency.
At Bingham McCutchen, Ms. Brozman also represented Ultimate Electrics, FiberMark and Footstar in their bankruptcy cases and played a role in the Adelphia Communications and Enron Chapter 11 cases.
Most recently, Brozman had supervised a team of lawyers who sorted through the multibillion-dollar Refco restructuring. The court-appointed trustee asked Brozman to provide legal counsel because of her experience, and despite having been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she told him she would devote “every well hour” she had to the case. Within 10 weeks, and after working with nearly 30 lawyers from different parties, Brozman and her team had helped the court-appointed trustee settle the multibillion-dollar case.
Brozman was named one of the 50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America by The National Law Journal. In May 2007, the UJA-Federation of New York’s bankruptcy and reorganization group unanimously selected Brozman as the 2007 recipient of the Professor Lawrence P. King Award for her contributions to the bankruptcy field.
Tina Brozman was born as Tina Lesser on October 7, 1952 in Mamaroneck, New York. She earned a B.A. from New York University in 1973 and her law degree from Fordham University in 1976.
She died after a two year battle with ovarian cancer on June 26, 2007, aged 54, survived by her husband, son and twin daughters.