The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to consider whether a judge should have recused himself in Kolon Industries Inc.’s long-running legal battle with E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., leaving Kolon to face DuPont’s trade secrets claims with a series of unfavorable lower court rulings intact.
Kolon hoped to entice the high court to rule that U.S. District Judge Robert Payne of the Eastern District of Virginia shouldn’t have heard the case because his onetime law partners represented DuPont in related litigation. Kolon’s lawyers at Paul Hastings first raised that argument in 2011, shortly before a jury found that Kolon stole DuPont’s secrets related to Kevlar and socked the company with a $919 million verdict.
