Hugh Sandler

Legal Honors

Public Trial Lawyer of the Year 2022 - Hugh D. Sandler Super Lawyers Hugh Sandler

Hugh Sandler has over a dozen years of experience litigating civil actions at both the trial and appellate levels. He has represented defendants and plaintiffs in actions principally under RICO, the Sherman Act, the Anti-Terrorism Act, the Commodity Exchange Act, the Alien Tort Statute, the Bank Secrecy Act, constitutional law, and anti-money laundering regulations, as well as breach of contract and business-related torts. Hugh has also represented clients in criminal matters involving DOJ, SEC, FBI, FinCEN, and OCC investigations.

Hugh’s representative matters include defending a multinational life insurance company in a variety of litigation, including a nationwide federal class action; defending indicted individuals in actions concerning allegations of fraud and financial wrongdoing; and representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Hugh’s trial work includes representing plaintiffs in a five-week federal human trafficking, Civil Rights Act, and RICO jury trial. The case, David v. Signal Int’l, LLC, achieved the largest jury award for labor trafficking in U.S. history. The verdict was recognized by the U.S. State Department in its 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report. For this trial, Hugh was recognized (along with his trial co-counsel) as Public Justice’s 2015 Trial Lawyer of the Year, which is an annual award issued by Public Justice to the legal team who litigated the leading precedent-setting and socially significant case to verdict or settlement in that year.  

Hugh has also briefed and argued appellate cases including before the Second Circuit, where he represented an appellant in Turkmen v. Ashcroft, a constitutional law case related to the landmark Iqbal litigation.

Hugh is a member of The Federal Bar Council’s Inn of Court, where he serves on the Second Circuit Courts Committee. He is also a faculty member of the Federal Bar Council’s “Access to Justice” program, which trains young attorneys on core litigation and trial skills. Hugh is also employed at the University of Waterloo as a sessional instructor teaching a fourth-year seminar course on federal civil practice in the university’s Sociology and Legal Studies Department. Hugh has been recognized as a “Super Lawyer” by Thomson Reuters’s Super Lawyers publication every year since 2014.

Hugh graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2003, with a Joint Honors degree in Economics and Political Science. In 2007, he graduated with Great Distinction from the McGill University Faculty of Law. Following law school, Hugh clerked for the Honorable Judge Arthur Gans of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. Hugh is proficient in French and holds dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship.