Ilann M. Maazel

Maazel was born in London and spent his early years moving from concert hall to concert hall with his parents. His father was Lorin Maazel, the conductor who later led the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. His mother is Israela Margalit, the concert pianist and playwright. After the family moved to Cleveland and then New York, he studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music and with private teachers in New York and Boston.

A musical career remained a real possibility. After college, Maazel and another pianist took a four-hands concert tour through Europe, playing in Italian churches, German castles, and Spanish venues. In Washington, D.C., he also founded MELODY, a nonprofit that brought music to abused and neglected children.

He attended Harvard, where he was named a Harvard National Scholar, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School in 1997. He became a civil-rights lawyer without giving up performance.

Snyder-Hill v. Ohio State University

Between 1978 and 1998, Ohio State University physician Richard Strauss examined thousands of young men. Former students and athletes later alleged that Strauss sexually abused them and that they did not learn until disclosures beginning in 2018 facts connecting the university itself to their injuries.

Maazel argued the consolidated Sixth Circuit appeal over when the Title IX claims accrued. Ohio State contended that the claims were decades too late. The plaintiffs argued that a Title IX claim runs against the university, not the individual abuser, and that they could not reasonably have discovered the university’s alleged role until information about what responsible officials allegedly knew and how they responded began to emerge.

The Sixth Circuit distinguished awareness of Strauss’s alleged misconduct from later discovery of facts suggesting that officials with authority allegedly knew of a heightened risk and responded with deliberate indifference. It reversed the limitations dismissal and held that the complaints plausibly alleged the plaintiffs could not reasonably have discovered Ohio State’s alleged role before 2018.

The ruling allowed factual development concerning university records, what responsible officials knew, how they responded, and when each claimant could reasonably have discovered those facts. Maazel then opposed rehearing and Supreme Court review. On June 26, 2023, the Supreme Court denied certiorari, leaving the published Sixth Circuit accrual decision intact.

In June 2026, Ohio State and the plaintiffs announced agreements in principle totaling $100 million for 279 of the 280 remaining Strauss survivors in pending litigation, and the university’s trustees unanimously ratified them. Earlier settlements had provided more than $60 million to more than 300 other people. Maazel’s firm represents nearly one hundred survivors in the litigation.

Breest v. Haggis

Haleigh Breest alleged that filmmaker Paul Haggis raped her after a premiere and brought a civil claim under New York City’s Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law.

After the trial court refused to dismiss the statutory claim, Maazel represented Breest in the Appellate Division. The defense argued that the law required a separate showing that Haggis expressed hostility toward women as a group. The appellate court held that allegations of rape or sexual assault could themselves support the statute’s gender-based-animus element.

The 2019 ruling preserved the civil-rights claim for trial. In 2022, a jury found Haggis civilly liable and awarded Breest $7.5 million in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages.

Civil Rights, Surveillance, and PATRIOT

Maazel’s other civil-rights work has included class actions challenging New York’s tampon tax and delays in Bronx Criminal Court, litigation seeking services for disabled preschool children and reduced violence in New York City jails, work connected to preservation of the High Line, and the 2016 presidential recount effort in Pennsylvania.

He also represented Americans challenging National Security Agency surveillance. That litigation later became the source material for PATRIOT, the satirical musical he wrote and composed about patriotism, love, and belief. In 2016, PATRIOT won first prize at the MUT International Musical Theatre Competition in Munich.

His commercial and nonprofit clients have included Martha Stewart, the Apollo Theater, Everytown for Gun Safety, the NAACP, the Children’s Aid Society, The New York Foundling, and the New York City Council. He has performed at Lincoln Center and recorded a four-hands album with his mother for Universal Classics & Jazz.

Current Practice

Maazel is a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel. His practice includes Title IX, survivor claims, discrimination, university accountability, police and prison abuse, wrongful convictions, and federal appeals.

He earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his law degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He is admitted in New York, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits, along with federal district courts throughout New York.