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How a Wiggin and Dana Team Landed on An Attention-Catching Storytelling Opening in a Long, Winning SJ Motion

In a case with nearly a century of history and some key nuggets unearthed in discovery, lawyers at Wiggin & Dana decided to explain why the change in ownership at storied shipbuilder Sparkman & Stephens led the company to attack a 1989 agreement with the firm's client, the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut.
7 minute read
Commentary

The High Art of Keeping Big Law Worker Bees Pleased (Or at Least Pleased Enough Not to Leave)

The American Lawyer's annual survey of midlevel associates is both an apt and cruel way to rank large law firms.
4 minute read
Best Practices

Some Strategic Approaches to Deposing Adverse Fact Witnesses

Building a rapport with a witness, especially a fact witness testifying for the first time, can pay dividends—as can a pre-deposition sweep of the target's social media presence.
5 minute read
Q&A

Litigation Leaders: Robin Cohen of Cohen Ziffer on the Advantages of Being on the Policyholder Side of the Insurance Recovery Practice

"Rather than competing with my colleagues for business, I have been able to partner with so many of my former Big Law colleagues who routinely refer me clients because of conflicts," says Cohen, who launched her boutique with colleagues from McKool Smith.
12 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: A Resounding Class Certification Win for Goldman Sachs at the 2nd Circuit

The court sided with a joint defense team led by Bob Giuffra at Sullivan & Cromwell and Kannon Shanmugam of Paul Weiss in finding a mismatch between the targeted drop in Goldman's stock price and the bank's generic statements about conflicts of interest and business ethics.
9 minute read
Quick Takes

Another Stellar Batch of Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Boies Schiller Flexner, Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check and Grant & Eisenhofer won more than $600 million in damages for shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at trial against the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
7 minute read
Best Practices

Preparation Makes Presentable: The Legwork That Goes Into Direct Testimony

Gwen Richard of McKinney Taylor in Houston, Texas likes to refer to direct examination as "the unsung hero of trial practice."
5 minute read
Q&A

Litigator of the (Past) Week: Bracewell's Warren Harris Revives Sex-Trafficking Suit Against Salesforce

In a split decision, the Seventh Circuit Court rejected Salesforce's argument that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shielded the company from a participant liability claim stemming from its relationship with the shuttered website Backpage.
5 minute read
Quick Takes

An Exceedingly Impressive Group of Litigator of the (Past) Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Lawyers at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and the Southern Poverty Law Center secured a ground-breaking ruling from the Fifth Circuit holding that a Mississippi law permanently disenfranchising people previously convicted of certain crimes amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
7 minute read
Expert Opinion

3 Keys to Successfully Litigating Alter Ego Claims

David Perez, Aaron Ver and Jake Dean of Perkins Coie write that when it comes to establishing or piercing the corporate veil, it's best to be a storyteller rather than a box-checker.
10 minute read
Conversation

What Makes a Successful Litigation Secondment Program?

McKinsey associate GC Veronica Ip and MoFo's Kate Driscoll discuss what each got out of the six-month spell that Driscoll covered for Ip while she was on parental leave.
12 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: What Trade Secrets? Latham Trial Team Fends Off $260M Claim From Alcoa for UAC

Tony Sammi, Rachel Blitzer and their team at Latham & Watkins, with co-counsel from their former colleagues at Skadden, defended Universal Alloy Corp. from accusations it misappropriated trade secrets from Alcoa to unfairly compete for work making parts for Boeing.
12 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

This week's highlights include an LTL bankruptcy rejection redux.
7 minute read
Analysis

5 Women Litigators Reflect on Their Paths to Partnership at Second Hundred Law Firms

The five newly-minted partners in Second Hundred firms who participated in Law.com's "How I Made It" series this past year illustrate the growing number of pathways to a successful litigation practice.
6 minute read
Profile

'Free Murchik': Junior Quinn Emanuel Lawyers Take on Pro Bono Cat Custody Battle

Quinn associate Sophie Hill and summer associate Danielle Zoellner tried a case in June on behalf of pro bono client Eva Pron. The stakes? Custody of Pron's Abyssinian cat Murchik.
7 minute read
Conversation

How Ryan Dykal of Shook, Hardy & Bacon Weaves Storytelling Into IP Trials

"To get people on your side, you don't respond to what the other side is saying. You tell your own story," says Dykal, who handles both plaintiff- and defense-side intellectual property work.
9 minute read
Q&A

Litigation Leaders: Sheppard Mullin's Robert Friedman on Splitting Leadership of the Business Trial Group Three Ways

"We all have three 'jobs': legal work for our clients; our own business development; and practice group leader responsibility," says Friedman, who splits leadership duties with co-heads Sascha Henry and John Brooks.
10 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Sullivan & Cromwell Helps Turn the Tables for Ocado Group in the 'Robot Wars'

After the U.K.-based maker of a software and robotics platform aimed at online grocers paired with The Kroger Co. to build automated warehouses across the U.S., rival AutoStore went on the patent offensive. But this past week, Garrard Beeney, Marc De Leeuw and Dustin Guzior of Sullivan & Cromwell helped secure a deal that involves AutoStore paying Ocado more than $250 million.
10 minute read
Quick Takes

Another Full Slate of Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

A team at Shook, Hardy & Bacon won a nine-digit verdict last week for client Touchstream Technologies Inc. against Google Inc.
7 minute read
Profile

Firefighter-Turned-Lawyer Jake Gardener Takes Up Insurance Fight For NYC Retirees

Jake Gardener, a former firefighter with Ladder 43 in East Harlem, who is now a partner at Walden Macht & Haran, has represented elderly and disabled retirees in legal challenges to the city's attempt to roll back some supplemental Medicare coverage.
7 minute read
Analysis

The Serious Emotional Work Judges Have to Do to Come Across as Dispassionate

"In an odd sort of way, the requirement to be impartial, and the related qualities of dispassion are actually sustained by emotion and emotion work," says Kathy Mack, an emeritus professor at Flinders Law School in southern Australia. "So rather than being opposites, they're actually very deeply enmeshed."
4 minute read
Conversation

'Fight Like Your Life Depended on It': Cooley's Kathleen Hartnett Reflects on a Decades-Long Relationship With a Pro Bono Client

"I think there is some lesson here for the skeptical at times lawyers to just really keep it up and not give up," said Hartnett of her client Nakia Roy, who at times in his decades-long appeals represented himself pro se.
6 minute read
Analysis

The Regional Bank Swoon Yielded a Securities Class Action Boomlet

Cornerstone Research noted in its midyear assessment of securities class actions that the string of bank failures that rocked the markets earlier this year already generated six securities class actions.
5 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: The Defense Team that Showed Ripple's XRP Isn't 'In and Of Itself' a Security

The eyes of the cryptocurrency industry have been on the SEC's case with Debevoise and Kellogg Hansen representing Ripple Labs and Cleary and Paul Weiss representing company executives.
11 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include lawyers from Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, Latham, Cravath, Kirkland, Cleary and Cooley.
6 minute read
Analysis

After Steep Pro Bono Hours Falloff in 2021, a Steady 2022

In what our friends at The American Lawyer called a "post-pandemic reset," average hours were flat in the latest Pro Bono Scorecard, after an earlier, precipitous drop from the time when lawyers filled their pandemic-stalled dockets with pro bono work.
5 minute read
Analysis

Paul Hastings Beats Coke's DQ Motion—and the Judge Breaks Out an Apt Metaphor

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Norway compared the Coca-Cola Co. to a "jaundiced-eyed vaudeville actor." It might sound like a stretch, but the comparison is actually quite illuminating once you hear the judge's setup.
4 minute read
Analysis

Getting Judges to Engage With the Science Early in MDLs

Loren Brown and Matt Holian of DLA Piper and Christa Cottrell of Kirkland & Ellis discuss the advantages of having education, explanatory court sessions early in multidistrict litigation.
5 minute read
Best Practices

'Let Them Get There on Their Own': Notes on Closing Arguments from Two Bronx Criminal Law Vets

The MTA Inspector General Office's Shareema Abel and Fordham Law's Adam Shlahet share tips on closing arguments from their time practicing in the Bronx, where they served as a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney, respectively.
5 minute read
Q&A

Litigator of the Week: Beth Wilkinson Takes the Lead for Microsoft in Fending Off FTC Challenge to Activision Deal

After Wilkinson and her team at Wilkinson Stekloff took the lead in a five-day evidentiary hearing, a federal judge in San Francisco refused the FTC's request to pump the brakes on the $69 billion deal.
6 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include teams from Williams & Connolly, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, and Singer Cashman.
6 minute read
Commentary

In Antitrust Cases, Recent DOJ Losses Don't Tell the Whole Story

In a guest column for the Litigation Daily, Jennifer Fischell and Thomas Schubert of MoloLamken write that even in the wake of recent losses, the Biden Administration has obtained key legal victories with broader ramifications in the labor-side antitrust space.
7 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the (Past) Week: A Defense Win for Gilead and Teva in a Rare Trial on Pay-For-Delay Claims

With Bart Williams of Proskauer and Devora Allon of Kirkland representing Gilead and Christopher Holding of Goodwin Procter representing Teva, the pharmaceutical companies beat back $3.6 billion in antitrust claims at trial in San Francisco stemming from an alleged "pay-for-delay" scheme involving two HIV drugs.
21 minute read

Litigators of the (Past) Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up honors go to a Weil, Gotshal & Manges team led by Drew Tulumello that represents BNSF Railway in a case brought under the Illinois Biometric…
3 minute read
Q&A

Erin Ziaja of NFP Corp. on Striking a Balance Between an Analytical Approach and Trusting Your Gut

"As lawyers, and particularly as litigators, we really value analytics: Hyper-analytical thought processes, really valuing logic. Sometimes that can weigh on those gut reactions and feelings that we all have—or it can cause you to think through and explain away things because we're always problem-solving and solution-reaching."
11 minute read
Q&A

Litigation Leaders: Miles Scully of Gordon Rees on the Value of Being in All 50 States

"The reason that everybody eats at McDonald's is that you know your Quarter Pounder is going to taste the same in New York as it's going to taste in Alaska," says the name partner of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani. "So the idea was to give our clients consistent service across all 50 states."
12 minute read
Q&A

Litigator of the Week: In Election Law and Arbitration Cases, Big Wins for Neal Katyal and Hogan Lovells at SCOTUS

Katyal, who crossed the 50-argument threshold at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, scored major wins for cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and the watchdog group Common Cause.
13 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Robins Kaplan partner Michael Collyard secured pre- and post-judgment interest on a $564 million jury verdict he won last year against BMO Harris Bank stemming from one the largest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.
6 minute read
Analysis

The Power of Presence: Insights From 3 LGBTQ+ State High Court Judges

New Mexico Supreme Court Chief Justice Shannon Bacon, Colorado Associate Justice Monica Márquez and Hawaii Associate Justice Sabrina McKenna spoke about their paths to the bench yesterday as part of a Pride Month presentation by the National Judicial College.
5 minute read
Conversation

Chewing on What It Means to Be a Trial Lawyer With Morrison & Foerster's James Brosnahan

"Justice at Trial," a memoir by the storied San Francisco trial lawyer is set for release next month. The Litigation Daily sat down with Brosnahan at his home in Berkeley, California to talk shop.
8 minute read
Profile

How Weil Associate Josh Halpern Argued 4 Appeals in 6 Weeks

Over a six-week span in May and June, Halpern argued appeals in the Second, Fifth and Seventh Circuits as well as New York's Appellate Division, Second Department.
7 minute read
Best Practices

Scoring Points for Your Case With the Other Side's Expert Witness

Mark Drummond, the executive director of the Civil Jury Project at NYU School of Law, and Loeb & Loeb partner Laura McNally share strategic approaches to expert witness cross-examination.
6 minute read
Q&A

Litigator of the Week: King & Spalding Wins $1B-Plus Construction Arbitration Award for Colombian Oil Refinery

After a six-week remote hearing, a team led by Mike Stenglein, the head of the firm's global construction and engineering disputes practice, also beat back more than $400 million in counterclaims from affiliates of the contractor, Chicago Bridge & Iron.
12 minute read
Quick Takes

A Fresh Batch of Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

A team at Jenner & Block represented Native American tribes in a Supreme Court case with implications for a wide swath of federal Indian law and policy.
6 minute read
Best Practices

Disarming Bad Facts, or Turning Them on Their Head

Plaintiffs lawyers Rosalyn "Sia" Baker-Barnes of Searcy Denney in West Palm Beach, Florida and Bibi Fell of Fell Law in San Diego offer examples of how they try to get out in front of defense arguments.
6 minute read
Q&A

Fox Corporation's Stephen J. Malone on Providing Advice Informed by a Client's Long-Term Business Goals

"An in-house lawyer needs to understand the organization's mission, products, priorities, leadership, and market strategy," says Malone, a veteran in-house employment lawyer whose portfolio at Fox includes overseeing some litigation.
7 minute read
Q&A

Litigation Leaders: Wilmer's Ronald Machen on the Value of a Strategic Approach

"We try to anticipate the next two or three or four moves on the chessboard," says Machen, who succeeded longtime litigation chair Howard Shapiro earlier this year. "We're always thinking of the long game, of creating the strongest record possible on appeal, whether to overturn or to defend the judgment."
14 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Boies Schiller Lands $290M Settlement From JPMorgan for Epstein Victims

The proposed settlement announced this week comes shortly after another $75 million deal with Deutsche Bank, another financial institution accused of turning a blind eye while providing financial services that enabled Jeffrey Epstein's sex-trafficking ring.
6 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Runners-up this week include lawyers from Hogan Lovells, Quinn Emanuel, Otterbourg, Weil Gotshal and Gibson Dunn.
8 minute read
Analysis

Is Business Development a Numbers Game or All About Relationships? Maybe Both

Newly-minted litigation partners at firms in the bottom half of the Am Law 100 share their thoughts on practice-building and winning clients.
6 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the (Past) Week: S&C and MLB Get Bankruptcy Ruling Forcing Diamond Sports to Pay Full Broadcast Fees

Jim Bromley and Ben Walker of Sullivan & Cromwell helped persuade a bankruptcy judge that MLB had offered to reacquire telecast rights from Diamond Sports Group, which owns regional sports networks that broadcast multiple teams' games.
5 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the (Past) Week Runners-Up

Teams from AXS Law, Cadwalader and Skadden take home runners-up honors.
3 minute read
Quick Takes

An Early Batch of Litigator of the Week Shout Outs

Giving some shine to the firms who scored litigation wins during the LOTW cycle that landed while we were out last week.
6 minute read
Conversation

Talking Songwriting and Litigating With Patent Litigator and LYON$ Frontman Trey Lyons

George Lyons III, or "Trey," became an equity partner at Chicago IP firm McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff late last year. His country band LYON$ dropped its second album this spring.
6 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Davis Polk Gets 2nd Circuit Blessing for Purdue Pharma's Multibillion-Dollar Bankruptcy Settlement

Davis Polk's Marshall Huebner and Benjamin Kaminetzky helped convince the Second Circuit to overturn a district court ruling finding the bankruptcy code didn't authorize liability releases for the Sackler family, the founders of the OxyContin maker.
12 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

A team from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison convinced the Second Circuit to vacate a $570 million trade secrets damages award against their client, IT services firm Syntel.
6 minute read
Best Practices

The Challenges Facing New Litigation Partners in the Am Law 50

Newly-minted litigation partners who participated in Law.com's "How I Made It" series of Q&As said learning the business of law and finding a personal niche were nearly every bit as important as mastering the practice.
7 minute read
Commentary

Is 'No Poach' No More?

Since 2016, when the DOJ's Antitrust Division first warned it would take the novel step of criminally investigating and prosecuting alleged no poach agreements, the agency has had a devastating track record: Zero convictions and acquittals of 13 individuals and one company across four trials.
6 minute read
Q&A

Litigation Leaders: Laurie Carr Mims of Keker, Van Nest & Peters on Preparing for Inevitable Change

"Litigation is inherently unpredictable, and being receptive to change allows you to approach problems from new angles and find creative solutions," says Mims, who became the San Francisco trial boutique's third-ever managing partner earlier this year.
13 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: Wilmer Gets a Clean Defense Sweep in Waco for Dropbox in Its First-Ever Trial

The cloud storage and file-sharing platform called on Wilmer's Greg Lantier and Amanda Major to push back against patent claims from Motion Offense, which initially sued a Dropbox customer.
7 minute read
Quick Takes

Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Patterson Belknap litigators got a ruling from a federal judge in New Jersey preserving patent protection for Janssen's Invega Trinza, an antipsychotic drug which generates about $600 million in annual sales in the U.S.
7 minute read
Analysis

More Notes From the Jury Room: What 3 Georgia Litigators Learned During Jury Duty

Three trial lawyers from the Peach State weigh in with practice tips they picked up from their time serving as jurors.
8 minute read
Analysis

Bringing the Courts Into the 'Google Age': An Assessment of the New York Judiciary's Pandemic Response

"I think we have to plan for the contingencies that we know are a virtual certainty that we will [face] in the future," said New York Supreme Court Justice Craig Doran, chair of the committee tasked with building on the court system's pandemic innovations.
5 minute read
Analysis

Notes From the Jurors: Responses to Our Call for Readers' Experiences With Jury Duty

A couple of readers—a litigator and a damages expert—weigh in with some thoughts on jury service.
6 minute read
Best Practices

When a Story Is More Useful Than a Roadmap

Professor Barbara Barron of Hofstra Law says when preparing an opening statement it's helpful to imagine that the factfinder is a five-year-old.
5 minute read
Q&A

Litigators of the Week: In Delaware Chancery Trial, Latham Defends Oracle's $9.3B NetSuite Deal

Peter Wald, Blair Connelly and their team at Latham & Watkins defended Oracle founder Larry Ellison and co-CEO Safra Catz from shareholder derivative claims stemming from Ellison's position as a major stakeholder at both companies.
12 minute read
Quick Takes

This Week's Litigator of the Week Runners-Up and Shout Outs

Plaintiffs lawyers at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll reached a $1 billion settlement with Wells Fargo & Co. in what's poised to be one of the 20 largest shareholder settlements of all-time if approved.
6 minute read
Best Practices

Trial Theme Showdown: Ways to Anticipate Your Opponent's Opening Themes or Make Your Own 'Unflippable'

Digging into opening statements with defense lawyer A. La'Verne Edney of Butler Snow and plaintiffs lawyer Richard Schoenberger of Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger.
4 minute read
Analysis

Some Important Tips on How to Win a #MeToo Case

I had the privilege of being part of the team that recently won a $10 million jury verdict in a rape case against two-time Oscar-winning writer and director, Paul Haggis. It was the first-ever case tried under the New York City Victims of Gender Motivated Violence Protection Act. From this and many other #MeToo cases in my firm's practice, here are some tips on how not just to threaten a #MeToo case, but to win one.
8 minute read
Analysis

Want to Know What Sets Your Litigation Department Apart? Maybe Not Trial Work

"What makes you different?" More than half the practice heads we've asked that question as part of our Litigation Leaders Q&As in the past year mentioned trial work first.
4 minute read
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Who Got The Work

J. Brugh Lower of Gibbons has entered an appearance for industrial equipment supplier Devco Corporation in a pending trademark infringement lawsuit. The suit, accusing the defendant of selling knock-off Graco products, was filed Dec. 18 in New Jersey District Court by Rivkin Radler on behalf of Graco Inc. and Graco Minnesota. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, is 3:24-cv-11294, Graco Inc. et al v. Devco Corporation.

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Who Got The Work

Rebecca Maller-Stein and Kent A. Yalowitz of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer have entered their appearances for Hanaco Venture Capital and its executives, Lior Prosor and David Frankel, in a pending securities lawsuit. The action, filed on Dec. 24 in New York Southern District Court by Zell, Aron & Co. on behalf of Goldeneye Advisors, accuses the defendants of negligently and fraudulently managing the plaintiff's $1 million investment. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, is 1:24-cv-09918, Goldeneye Advisors, LLC v. Hanaco Venture Capital, Ltd. et al.

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Who Got The Work

Attorneys from A&O Shearman has stepped in as defense counsel for Toronto-Dominion Bank and other defendants in a pending securities class action. The suit, filed Dec. 11 in New York Southern District Court by Bleichmar Fonti & Auld, accuses the defendants of concealing the bank's 'pervasive' deficiencies in regards to its compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act and the quality of its anti-money laundering controls. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, is 1:24-cv-09445, Gonzalez v. The Toronto-Dominion Bank et al.

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Who Got The Work

Crown Castle International, a Pennsylvania company providing shared communications infrastructure, has turned to Luke D. Wolf of Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani to fend off a pending breach-of-contract lawsuit. The court action, filed Nov. 25 in Michigan Eastern District Court by Hooper Hathaway PC on behalf of The Town Residences LLC, accuses Crown Castle of failing to transfer approximately $30,000 in utility payments from T-Mobile in breach of a roof-top lease and assignment agreement. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Susan K. Declercq, is 2:24-cv-13131, The Town Residences LLC v. T-Mobile US, Inc. et al.

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Who Got The Work

Wilfred P. Coronato and Daniel M. Schwartz of McCarter & English have stepped in as defense counsel to Electrolux Home Products Inc. in a pending product liability lawsuit. The court action, filed Nov. 26 in New York Eastern District Court by Poulos Lopiccolo PC and Nagel Rice LLP on behalf of David Stern, alleges that the defendant's refrigerators’ drawers and shelving repeatedly break and fall apart within months after purchase. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Joan M. Azrack, is 2:24-cv-08204, Stern v. Electrolux Home Products, Inc.

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