The long watch

Mitchell A. Stein has been Sea Tow’s legal architect since the very beginning of the franchise question. It was Stein — then at Lieberman, Rudolph & Nowak — who wrote to the Attorney General’s office on September 7, 1989 in the matter captioned People v. Sea Tow International, proposing the restructured license agreement that swapped the $2,500 franchise fee for a $500 “sales materials” payment Doc. 192-4. Thirty-seven years later he is simultaneously Sea Tow’s general counsel, its lead litigation attorney in the E.D.N.Y. case, and a named third-party defendant in the same case. One conflicted hat is a hazard; Stein wears the full rack. It is the signature amenity of the Frochise™: why hire several lawyers when one can allegedly represent every side at once?

The sanctions record — court findings, not our opinions

Alkoff v. Gold (S.D.N.Y. 1988). Sanctions for what the court described as unreasonable conduct. The opening act.

Margo v. Weiss, 213 F.3d 55 (2d Cir. 2000). The “Lion Sleeps Tonight” authorship case. The Second Circuit affirmed sanctions against Stein and co-counsel after he filed materials that contradicted his own clients’ earlier sworn testimony.

Libaire v. Kaplan (E.D.N.Y. 2008). A 1988 hunting-preserve share, recast twenty years later as federal securities fraud. Magistrate Judge E. Thomas Boyle found the claim appeared “brought solely to harass the defendants,” and — reviewing the prior sanctions — wrote that Stein “has not learned his lesson.” Rule 11 sanctions of $94,854 were imposed jointly on Stein and his client. Stein’s recorded reaction to the court’s reasoning: “Machiavellian logic.”

The trademark that sank

In 2017, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled Sea Tow’s federal registration for its signature yellow hull color Reg. 3678375 · Cancellation No. 92059856 — not on the merits, but as a discovery sanction, after concluding that “any sanction short of judgment would be futile.” A federal tribunal, surrendering. As far as we can tell from the record, nobody told the franchisees who were still paying for that yellow. See The Color of Confusion in the archive.

The current file

The pattern allegations continue into the present tense. His own co-counsel, Steven Altman, withdrew in 2023 telling the court that “STSI insisted on legal strategies that I believe are contrary to the law and my ethical obligations” Doc. 241. In December 2025, Magistrate Judge Locke found a representation in Sea Tow’s motion papers to be, in the court’s word, “untrue,” and closed document discovery. In February 2026, seventeen non-party subpoenas went out against a ten-deposition court order — and drew an emergency stay, later dissolved in favor of court-imposed confidentiality DE 311, DE 314. A nine-count adversary complaint 8:20-ap-00518-CED separately alleged conflicted dual representation of franchisor and franchisee; those allegations remain unadjudicated and unrebutted on the merits. Allegations, we stress — but the file grows thicker, and it has been growing since 1988.