Mr. Topel has practiced communications and corporate law for over thirty years. His practice has been concentrated on the representation of television and radio broadcasting companies and venture capital funds that invest in communications properties. His practice has involved each of the major areas of broadcast law: regulation; adjudication; and business structures, affairs, and transactions. In the regulatory arena, he has worked with clients, FCC regulators, broadcast engineers, consultants, and other industry participants on countless applications to obtain administrative approvals, to ensure clients’ compliance with legal requirements, and to reach successful solutions to routine and vexing regulatory concerns.
In the business and transactional area, Mr. Topel has drafted and reviewed agreements and other documents and counseled clients on numerous acquisitions; sales; mergers; financings and re-financings; equity capitalizations; security interests; settlements; and business structuring, formation and compliance activities. He has devised creative structures to enable clients to achieve their goals in complex regulatory contexts. He makes a concerted effort to be familiar with and sensitive to clients’ business objectives and circumstances and to use his contacts to bring potential business opportunities to his clients’ attention.
Mr. Topel has a successful record in FCC adjudicatory proceedings. He has represented many applicants who prevailed in difficult hearing cases, such as the winning applicant in an FCC proceeding in which twenty-three parties competed for a full-power television station in Miami, Florida. He was lead litigation counsel for the Trinity Broadcasting Network in a challenged license renewal proceeding, successfully taking the FCC to court to vindicate Trinity from FCC allegations that it was not a qualified license-holder.
Mr. Topel represents numerous venture capital funds with respect to their investments. In addition to counseling on transactions and preparing loan, equity, and security instruments, he concentrates on overcoming hurdles to achieve consummation of difficult transactions to enable his clients to realize their entitled benefits. Mr. Topel also serves as corporate counsel for the American Society for Information Science and Technology and other trade associations and corporations.
The first twenty-three years of his legal career were spent at Mullin, Rhyne, Emmons and Topel, P.C., a highly respected broadcast practice boutique. He was the managing member of that firm for ten years.
