Handling the Most Complex Litigation

During 2007, our Firm’s litigators continued to work on a wide range of challenging assignments, spanning our global practice and assisting our clients in the successful resolution of a number of important and precedent-setting matters.

Our Firm has continued to defend successfully Barclays in the Enron securities class action, widely considered to be the largest and most complex securities class action in history. Despite settlements by several other financial institutions involved in the action totaling in excess of US$ 6.6 billion, our Firm pursued, on behalf of Barclays, the dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims. Our defense strategy proved highly successful: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the class certification order and the U.S. Supreme Court denied plaintiffs’ petition for review of the Fifth Circuit’s decision.

In 2007, our Firm continued to handle significant securities litigation work on behalf of many of the world’s leading financial institutions and corporations. Examples include representing Goldman Sachs and the 55 underwriter investment banks in In re Initial Public Offering Securities Litigation, one of the most intricate and long-running securities litigation matters in history. The Second Circuit, in reversing the district court’s class certification order in this matter, issued a landmark ruling clarifying the requirements for obtaining class action status in a decision that will resonate across putative class actions in all areas of complex litigation. We continue to represent UBS in class action and derivative litigation arising out of UBS’s role as lead investment banker for HealthSouth. In addition, our litigation lawyers have defended BP in derivative and class action litigation arising out of the shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in 2006, and CA, Inc. in shareholder litigation arising out of the alleged accounting misconduct by prior management.

Our criminal defense and investigations lawyers continued to play a leading role in many of the major enforcement investigations and proceedings involving prominent individuals and corporations last year. The group’s lawyers represent clients in investigations involving the subprime market decline, economic sanctions and anti-money laundering compliance, stock options backdating, healthcare fraud, and violations of trade sanctions and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Our investigations are increasingly multinational in scope, involving numerous regulators and prosecutors in jurisdictions around the globe. Our success is confirmed by the fact that most of these matters remain non-public.

Notable public representations handled by our criminal defense and investigations lawyers include BP in the settlement of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigations of alleged commodities manipulation, including entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ and a consent order with the CFTC; Diageo, in the successful negotiation of an industry-wide settlement agreement, resolving an industry-wide investigation by the Attorney General of the State of New York into spirits and wine pricing, promotion and other sales practices in New York State; and Thomas Weisel Partners in regulatory investigations by the SEC, FINRA (formerly NASD), NYSE and the California Department of Corporations on behalf of all 50 states regarding research reports of its analysts and possible conflicts of interest. Ongoing representations also include advising Statoil in connection with its compliance with the deferred prosecution agreement entered into at the time of settlement, and British Airways in two global criminal antitrust investigations and in related multi-district class action lawsuits over allegations of price fixing of fuel surcharges with respect to cargo and passenger air services.

Our Firm’s litigators achieved a number of favorable trial and settlement outcomes in 2007. We represented Microsoft in a three-month jury trial in Iowa, resulting in a favorable settlement for Microsoft. Continuing a string of successful results in intellectual property matters, our Firm, acting on behalf of Dyson, settled a patent infringement/false advertising action against Hoover at the conclusion of a one-week jury trial. We also achieved successful pre-trial results for Philips in patent litigation in which the district court found Philips’ patents to be infringed: on the morning of the trial to determine damages, defendants agreed to pay substantial royalties to Philips. We continued our preeminent work in advising a number of patent licensing programs with respect to both patent and competition law.

Our antitrust lawyers had a number of successes in 2007, including securing U.S. and European antitrust clearances in major M&A deals (including the acquisition of Endesa by Enel and Acciona, The Bank of New York merger with Mellon Financial, and the sale of Alcan to Rio Tinto) and achieving another antitrust victory for Microsoft in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Our litigators obtained a major victory for Diageo, ending four years of litigation relating to allegations that Diageo’s advertising practices “targeted” persons under the legal drinking age. After the plaintiffs’ legal theories were repeatedly rejected by trial and appellate courts in a series of decisions in class actions filed across the U.S., plaintiffs agreed to terminate all remaining actions and appeals without payment or changes in practices.