Dan Ackman

Dan Ackman is an American journalist and civil rights lawyer, who graduated from Wesleyan University and Columbia Law School. He has written on law, policy, business, and sports for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Daily News, Newsday, New York Post, The American Lawyer, The New York Observer, Slate, Inc., Pink Magazine, Salon and Forbes. He has also been a columnist for Forbes.com, BreakingViews and the Wall Street Journal's Law Page. At Forbes.com, writing about everything from the Enron scandal to the pornography industry, he was named a finalist for the Online Journalism Award. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN, NPR, PBS, CNBC, CBS, the BBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, ESPN Radio and Fox Business.
Some of his notable television appearances include:
CNBC on Dennis Kozlowski's Appeal
NPR on the Frank Quattrone trial
CNN on Martha Stewart
The James Goodale Show on the Rather Report
Fox News/The O'Reilly Factor
NPR on the Alfred Taubman price-fixing prosecution
CNN on the Dennis Kozlowski trial
In addition to writing about law and business, Ackman has written extensively about off-beat sporting events such as ping pong, outrigger canoe racing, Ivy League wrestling, the Army Best Ranger competition, squash, the world cyber-games World Cyber Games, and white collar boxing Gleason's gym.

As a lawyer, Ackman has successfully represented taxi drivers in claims against the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). These victories include:

• An order opening the TLC courts to the public,
• A ruling in the case of Padberg v. McGrath-McKechnie that TLC courts systemically deprived taxi drivers of their constitutional rights to due process, by suspending their licenses based solely on allegations that they had refused to pick up passengers based on the passengers' race
• An order requiring Mayor Giuliani to testify in the Padberg v. McGrath-McKechnie case. Ackman recalled the deposition in an article he wrote for Slate in 2008.
• A $7 million judgment for victims of the Mayor Giuliani's and the TLC's Operation Refusal policy.
• A summary judgment order holding that the TLC violated the Fourth Amendment and Due Process rights of motorists by seizing their vehicles without a warrant or any valid exception to the warrant requirement.

On March 25, 2011, in Nnebe v. Daus, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated in large part a district court ruling that permitted the TLC to suspend a taxi driver based solely on an arrest (including misdemeanor arrests) and continue that suspension without a meaningful hearing, and without any evidence or suspicion that the driver had ever harmed a passenger. (New York Law Journal, March 28, 2011). (Writing for Forbes about the earlier district court ruling, University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein attacked that ruling, saying the court ignored the "obvious need for an expanded initial hearing that lets the driver give his version of the facts and, if need be, to post a bond to continue to earn his livelihood."Professor Epstein noted as well that 90% of the cabbies who were arrested and suspended over the years were ultimately exonerated.)

Another case, Rothenberg v. Daus, contests TLC's practice of revoking taxicab drivers' licenses who are convicted of a crime, including non-violent misdemeanors and even traffic infractions, almost always occurring when the cab driver was off duty. The TLC had succeeded in winning a motion to dismiss, but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the district court order and reinstated] all of the cabdrivers' claims.

Ackman is challenging the legitimacy of the city's administrative law tribunals in two lawsuits pending in the New York federal courts and has led the successful effort to discredit the TLC's charges that a majority of the city's taxi drivers have overcharged passengers.