Michael B. Tischman

Michael B. Tischman, a prominent Newark attorney for more than forty years and the youngest of five founding partners of one of New Jersey’s largest law firms, died in Morristown Medical Center on November 7, 2018.  He was 81.

Born and raised in Elizabeth, Mr. Tischman received his college degree from the University of Pennsylvania where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with Honors in English.  He was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army stationed at Ft. Lee, Virginia, and a first lieutenant in the Army Reserve from 1960 to 1967.  He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and hold a Master’s Degree in Federal Taxation from New York University. After graduating law school in 1963, Mr. Tischmanserved a judicial clerkship with Judge Walter J. Freund of the New Jersey Appellate Division, following which he joined a small Newark law firm which in 1971 became Sills Beck Cummis Radin & Tischman, a firm of five lawyers which grew to more than 150 lawyers as Sills Cummis Radin TischmanEpstein & Gross. 

Mr. Tischman served as co-chair of the firm’s corporate and healthcare departments for many years, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. In that capacity, he represented either the buyer or the seller in the purchase/sale of many of New Jersey’s leading companies and institutions, including Maidenform, New Jersey Law Journal, Eyelab, Wayne General Hospital, United Hospitals, and Columbus Hospital. In 2004, Mr. Tischmanundertook a reduced work schedule, and became senior counsel to Sills Cummis & Gross. He retired December 31, 2011.

Mr. Tischman was panel chair for a New Jersey District Fee Arbitration Committee; a member of the Seton Hall Law School Health Law & Policy Program Advisory Board; a member of the State Bar Committee on Revisions to the New Jersey Uniform Limited Partnership Act; author of the entry for his law firm in Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press); a Trustee of the Morris Museum, and has been listed in Who’s Who in America since 1992. He lived in Scotch Plains since 1973, and was a member of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield.

He married his high school sweetheart, Elinor Cohen Tischman, in 1959. After 45 years of marriage, she died in 2004. He is survived by his son David and his wife Maggie Malina; his daughter Susan and her husband Gregory Long; two grandchildren, Emily and Alexandra Long; a brother, Stephen Tischman and his wife Sandi; a sister, Judith Landin and her husband Myron; and his loving companion since 2007, Dana Forfa.

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