Milton Hyman is partner emeritus in the Los Angeles office of Irell & Manella LLP. His practice focuses on complex tax and corporate matters.
Mr. Hyman specializes in business planning for corporations, limited liability companies and partnerships, handling major acquisitions and combinations, especially when there is a high tax component to the deal. He headed the teams responsible for the Thrifty-Payless drug stores and Kenneth Leventhal & Company-Ernst and Young combinations, as well as representing Broadcom Corporation in connection with many of its acquisitions. Mr. Hyman also was responsible for the leveraged recapitalizations of Big 5 Sporting Goods, Consolidated Vision Group, Inc. and Penhall International, the initial public offering of Big 5. Mr. Hyman was heavily involved in structuring and implementing cable company acquisitions that ultimately resulted in Charter Communications, Inc. and in credit facility and public debt-related transactions for Charter. He also represented the Rams in their relocation to St. Louis, negotiating the principal agreements with the St. Louis governmental agencies and the sale of a minority ownership stake in the team. Mr. Hyman recently advised the former majority owner of the Rams in the sale of a controlling interest in the team.
In addition to his business planning work, Mr. Hyman has extensive experience handling tax controversies involving federal and state taxation. He has successfully resolved for his clients many tax controversies ranging in size from relatively small cases of less than one million dollars to those involving hundreds of millions of dollars of tax deficiencies and interest. These tax controversies include corporate and partnership tax matters, as well as California unitary taxation, residency disputes, and property and sales tax controversies.
Mr. Hyman has acted as special tax counsel to debtors in possession, creditors' committees, and major creditors in major corporate reorganizations under the Bankruptcy Act and the Bankruptcy Code. As tax counsel, he has been responsible for bankruptcy tax planning, as well as the resolution in a bankruptcy reorganization context of significant tax controversies with the IRS and other taxing authorities. Among the cases in which Mr. Hyman has acted as tax counsel are GAC Corporation, Daylin, Inc., Wickes Companies, Inc., Storage Technology Corporation, Smith International, Apex Oil Company, Inc., JPS Textile Group, Inc., L.A. Gear, Inc., Martin Lawrence Limited Editions, Inc., Medieval Dinner & Tournament, Inc. and Covad Communications Group, Inc. He also represented Fresenius Medical Care Holdings, Inc. in connection with complex creditor tax matters involving the W.R. Grace & Co. bankruptcy proceedings.
At Harvard Law School, Mr. Hyman was a member of the Board of Editors, Harvard Law Review. His note was cited by the Supreme Court: "But see." As a result of receiving a Harvard University Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, Mr. Hyman and his wife traveled around the world for an academic year after graduating and taking the California bar exam, before joining the Army General Counsel's Office in the Pentagon for three years.
Mr. Hyman has been recognized as a leading tax attorney by Chambers & Partners in the 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 Chambers Global World's Leading Lawyers for Business Guides and by Legal 500 in its 2007 Legal 500 US Volume IV - Real Estate, Labor and Employment, and Tax. He has also been included for the past nineteen years in The Best Lawyers in America in the areas of bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights as well as tax law. Mr. Hyman was named to the Southern California "Super Lawyers" list by Los Angeles Magazine every year since 2006. In addition, Mr. Hyman has been featured in Who's Who Legal for 2009 in the specialty area of corporate tax.
Mr. Hyman and his wife of 46 years have two children. He loves reading, gardening, traveling, and collecting art and antiques. Best of all, Mr. Hyman loves spending time with his four grandchildren, as well as his daughter, a physician, and his son, a rabbi, and their respective spouses. Mr. Hyman is a member of the board for the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies and a past president of Sinai Temple, the largest conservative congregation west of the Mississippi.
Professional Activities
Mr. Hyman is a past chairman of both the Corporate Tax Committee and the Committee on Affiliated and Related Corporations of the ABA Tax Section. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute, Tax Advisory Group, Federal Income Project.
Bar & Court Admissions
1967, California
Education
Harvard University (J.D., 1966), magna cum laude; Member of the Board of Editors for the Harvard Law Review
University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., Economics, 1963), with highest honors; Phi Beta Kappa