Weil Gotshal & Manges sign logo(Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

Litigators at Weil, Gotshal & Manges are on a roll, notching four significant wins last week.

On July 25, Weil won a motion to dismiss all claims in a stockholder class action filed in Delaware Chancery Court arising out of the $18 billion “merger of equals” between Willis Group and Towers Watson. The 2016 union created the global risk management, insurance and advisory giant Willis Towers Watson.

The court rejected claims that the former directors of Towers Watson breached their fiduciary duties in connection with their approval of the merger.

The Weil team was led by securities litigation practice co-head John Neuwirth, and included partner Josh Amsel and associates Matthew Connors, Amanda Pooler and Sean Moloney. Brad Aronstam of Ross Aronstam & Moritz served as Delaware counsel.

The day before, a Weil team led by Ed Reines, who co-heads the firm's patent litigation and life sciences practices—along with partner Derek Walter, counsel Robert Vlasis, and associates Amanda Branch and Chris Lavin—scored another win in Delaware. 

Facing opposing counsel including Orrick's Joshua Rosenkranz and Melanie Bostwick, the Weil team convinced U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews to grant a permanent injunction on behalf of their clients Bio-Rad and the University of Chicago. The ruling, which follows a $24 million jury verdict, bars 10X Genomics from manufacturing or selling a number of infringing products.

Also on July 24, Edward Soto (co-head of Weil's complex commercial litigation practice and managing partner of the firm's Miami office) plus associates Pravin Patel, Corey Brady, Lara Bach and Brian Liegel shut down a consumer class action in the Southern District of Florida against Sweden-based Dometic Corp. 

The plaintiffs alleged that Dometic's gas absorption refrigerators designed for use in RVs and boats had a design defect that resulted in excessive corrosion. (I wrote about a predecessor case here.) U.S. District Judge Robert Scola Jr. denied class certification and dismissed the case, finding the proposed class was not ascertainable.

Last but not least, a team led by litigation department co-chair Jonathan Polkes and partner Josh Amsel prevailed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on July 22. At issue: a $120 million settlement resolving allegations that broker Willis Ltd. fraudulently induced investments in the Stanford Ponzi scheme—the second biggest Ponzi scheme in history after Madoff.

Weil designed and won approval for the 2017 settlement from a judge in the Northern District of Texas. The deal included an order barring all other pending suits—even those in state court. Some investors challenged the settlement, arguing that the federal court had no jurisdiction to stop cases not before it, but the Fifth Circuit upheld the settlement. 

“By entering the bar orders, the district court recognizes the reality that, given the finite resources at issue in this litigation, Stanford's investors must recover Ponzi-scheme losses through the receivership distribution process,” the panel wrote. “The brokers' incentives to settle are reduced—likely eliminated—if each investor retains an option to pursue full recovery in individual satellite litigation. Such resolution is no resolution.”