Carl J. Mayer

Grant was also an adviser to many prominent politicians including Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, John and Bobby Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson. Active in Jewish affairs, he received the American Jewish Committee’s Human Relations Award.

Again, it bears repeating that our reasoning here is limited to the unusual and even unique circumstances presented by this appeal. We do not condone the conduct on the part of the Patriots and the team’s head coach, and we likewise refrain from assessing whether the NFL’s sanctions (and its alleged destruction of the videotapes themselves) were otherwise appropriate.

Additionally, in June 2017, before NJ Transit's "summer of hell" Mayer wrote an op-ed, "NJ Transit riders of the world, unite!" calling for a passenger sit-in as an act of protest over the terrible conditions New Jersey commuters are being submitted to.

In February 2016, Mayer Law Group filed consumer class actions against Dunkin' Donuts Brands, Inc. in New York and New Jersey. The suits allege that the doughnut retailer has been unlawfully assessing a surcharge, noted on receipts as a "sales tax," on products the company cannot lawfully charge tax on.

Mayer's law firm has litigated and prevailed against some of the largest corporations in the world on behalf of consumers, workers, senior citizens and taxpayers. His firm has recovered tens of millions of dollars for thousands of class members defrauded by unlawful or deceptive corporate practices. Mayer's firm has successfully sued Verizon (the world's 40th largest corporation) on behalf of consumers overcharged on their phone bills and successfully sued the world's largest water utility – GDF Suez, a French multinational corporation—for selling phony warranties to minorities and inner city residents in America. Mayer represents senior citizens in lawsuits against Assisted-Living facilities that overbill customers.

He received his J.D. degree from the University of Chicago – where he was on the Law Review and was President of the student body. He also holds an LL.M degree from Harvard Law School.

Mayer wrote the first law review article calling for an amendment to the United States Constitution that would strip corporations of any rights under the Constitution. The widely cited article began a movement to abolish “corporate personhood” which, Mayer pointed out, was a line of judicial decisions that accorded corporations all of the Bill of Rights protections humans enjoy, even though corporations are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. Mayer called this "an extraordinary act of judicial activism" and coined the phrase “corporate substantive due process” which essentially means that corporations can use their Constitutional powers – granted by the courts – to overturn regulations of corporations. The most noxious of these rights, according to Mayer, are those accorded to corporations by judges under the First Amendment. Mayer's article, “Personalizing the Impersonal” (Hastings Law Journal, March 1990), has been credited with being an early responder to this issue.

Carl Mayer served as co-lead counsel to the plaintiffs in Hedges v. Obama, a lawsuit filed January 13, 2012 against the Obama administration and members of the U.S. Congress by a group including former New York Times reporter and columnist Christopher Hedges, challenging the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA). The legislation permits the U.S. government to indefinitely detain people "who substantially support Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the United States".

Long before the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in 2010, Mayer wrote the first law review article calling for the elimination of corporate rights under the United States constitution which nowhere mentions corporations.

After the 2007 New England Patriots video scandal, widely dubbed "Spygate," broke, Carl Mayer filed a federal lawsuit. A New York Jets season-ticket holder, Mayer filed the lawsuit against the New England Patriots, coach Bill Belichick and the NFL "on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated" alleging fraud, among other claims.

In May 2006, Mayer and attorney Bruce Afran filed a lawsuit in federal court in New Jersey, against Verizon, challenging the National Security Agency's (NSA) wiretapping operations and alleging that the company turned over call records to the NSA. Filed on behalf of unnamed AT&T employees, the suit claims that in February 2001 the NSA met with AT&T officials to discuss replicating a network center in Bedminster, NJ, with the goal of allowing the agency access to all the international phone and e-mail traffic running through the center. One of the plaintiffs, an engineer, told The New York Times "that he participated in numerous discussions with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency 'could listen in' with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review. There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.

The firm has sued utility United Water, in both New Jersey - filed in 2004 - and New York - filed in 2016. In New Jersey, a multimillion-dollar settlement has been reached, alleging that United Water New Jersey Inc. or HomeServe USA Corp., offered for sale various types of Service Plans to owners of multi-unit dwellings in New Jersey where the Service Plans specifically exclude multi-unit dwellings, and the owners did not receive service or refund.

Among these was Martin Barnes, then the mayor of Paterson, New Jersey, who received a forty-count indictment handed down by the United States Attorney for New Jersey, Chris Christie, on January 25, 2002. While the charges laid against Barnes included soliciting and accepting free trips, home improvements like a backyard swimming pool and waterfall, designer suits and money to pay for "female companionship," the investigation of Barnes and his administration grew out of the federal inquiry into United Gunite.

The lawsuit asserted that because teams discovered the illicit videotaping, Jets ticket holders should be compensated for all games played in Giants Stadium between the Jets and Patriots since Belichick became head coach in 2000.

After Mayer's exposé on 60 Minutes, Free came under investigation, and in 1999 he admitted to handing out illegal gifts, trips and cash in exchange for millions of dollars worth of New Jersey government contracts for United Gunite. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark stated that Free had admitted he routinely offered graft to officials in the "various municipalities" in which his firm sought and obtained contracts. As part of his plea deal, Free worked with the FBI to secretly record his dealings for investigators - resulting in the arrest of several New Jersey officials.

The Supreme Court in an opinion in Amoco Production Co. v. Southern Ute Tribe 526 U.S. 865 (1999) cited Mayer's book Public Domain as a comprehensive history of public lands in America, which comprise almost one-third of the lands of the United States. Besides law review articles, Mayer has published numerous opinion pieces - most recently an op-ed in the New York Daily News calling for a passenger sit-in for riders of NJ Transit - and appeared on all the major networks to advance his views on public interest law and political reform.

In 1996, while serving as the first Independent elected to the Township Committee in Princeton, New Jersey, Mayer went undercover for the CBS program 60 Minutes. Working with the news program, he uncovered corruption and bribery among state officials and corporate lobbyists.

The segment originated when Mayer wrote an article for The New York Times on the topic in 1995 describing the intersection of state politics and corporate lobbyists. In particular, he singled out two events: the annual New Jersey State League of Municipalities convention for elected officials in Atlantic City as well as an event sponsored by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce in which the organization would charter an Amtrak train to transport over 1,000 politicians, businessmen and lobbyists from New Jersey to Washington for its annual Congressional reception.

Carl J. Mayer (born April 23, 1959 in Brookline, Massachusetts) is an American lawyer, politician, author, public speaker and consumer advocate.