O'Melveny Joins Rush to Form State AG Practices as It Fights for J&J in Opioid Cases
The new practice group already has 24 lawyers, and O'Melveny & Myers is looking to bolster that number as stepped up state enforcement continues apace.
October 28, 2019 at 06:36 PM
3 minute read
(Left to right) Daniel Suvor, Ross Galin and Steve Brody, with O'Melveny & Myers.
O'Melveny & Myers this month became the latest major law firm to open a practice group dedicated to pushing back against scrutiny by state attorneys general.
The firm has had a front row seat to the threat posed by committed state attorneys general—especially when they opt to target a company or industry in unison. O'Melveny is lead litigation counsel for Johnson & Johnson as the company fights off more than 2,000 lawsuits relating to the opioid crisis; many of those suit were launched or sparked by the states.
Daniel Suvor, one of the co-leads of O'Melveny's new practice group, is not expecting the pressure from state attorneys general to let up. Not when both Democratic and Republican attorneys general believe they are filling a void left by the federal government and have built up their offices to handle the increased caseload.
"I think that's probably a fact of life now," said Suvor, a Los Angeles-based partner who was the chief of policy for former California Attorney General Kamala Harris. "I don't see the trend changing any time soon."
The trend is hard to overstate—in May alone, Cozen O'Connor, which has its own state attorneys general practice group, tracked nine major state attorney general actions, likely setting a new record, the law firm said at the time.
Suvor is co-leading the practice group with Ross Galin in New York and Steve Brody in Washington, D.C. The new group has 24 attorneys—with more to come, Suvor said.
"We do plan to grow the group and will likely be making strategic lateral hires in the coming months," Suvor said. "The firm is making a big investment in building on this already strong practice and doubling down because it's what our clients are telling us is among their biggest concerns and priorities."
Other national firms have just as readily reacted to the stepped-up enforcement in the states. The opening of O'Melveny's group comes one month after Blank Rome brought in a high-ranking official from the Pennsylvania attorney general's office to kick-start its own attorney general-centered practice group. Cozen O'Connor, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Squire Patton Boggs, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, King & Spalding and Alston & Bird are also among the firms that have launched their own state attorney general groups.
The California attorney general's office, where Suvor worked for nearly three years, boasts on its website of employing more than 4,500 lawyers, investigators, sworn peace officers and other employees. That would make it one of the largest law firms in the world.
"They are much more aggressive regulators now. They're banding together in many regards, and view themselves as the last line of defense," Suvor said. "We're noticing that trend; in large part, I was hired to O'Melveny in 2017 in response to that."
Read More
As State Prosecutors Keep Teaming Up, Another State AGs Practice Is Born
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