Complex Commercial Litigation

We have been recognized for our experience in high-stakes business disputes across a wide range of industries, jurisdictions, and subject matters. The 2023 edition of Benchmark Litigation ranks us in the publication’s highest category for Dispute Resolution—one of the few boutiques to achieve that top designation—and ranks several of our partners as “Litigation Stars.” We pride ourselves on being generalist litigators who resolve unique legal problems that often require novel strategies and approaches, frequently involving multiple jurisdictions, choices of law, and complicated factual records.

In recent years, we have handled numerous high-profile, complex civil matters, including a major derivative litigation on behalf of the Special Litigation Committee of the Board of Xerox, the defense of securities class actions alleging billions of dollars in damages on behalf of companies in a wide range of industries, and the defense of class action litigation against media companies brought under the VPPA. We have been retained for a number of complex civil litigations on behalf of academic foundations, boxing leagues, media companies, blockchain companies, tax preparation companies, and individuals, and involving subject matters including antitrust, intellectual property, contract, securities, fiduciary duties, and business torts.

We have been retained at all stages of litigation proceedings, sometimes after the case has been pending for years, and sometimes to supplant original counsel following an adverse result. Recently, we were brought into a long-running family dispute over control of $1 billion in assets after previous counsel had lost at trial. We also have significant experience taking on cases on an emergency or expedited basis, including in 2022, when we successfully opposed an ex-parte Temporary Restraining Order seeking to depose our Director clients in a hostile takeover of a major media company. In 2017, we were retained after the client had received one of the largest sanctions awards ever issued in the Southern District of New York, and obtained a reversal and vacatur of that award by unanimous decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

As separately highlighted here, we maintain one of the premier litigation practices in the United States relating to shareholder and corporate governance disputes on behalf of companies, executives, and Boards of Directors, with the 2023 Chambers USA Guide ranking us among the nation’s top law firms in the Securities Litigation category—the only boutique firm in the United States to receive such recognition.

In one of our first matters as a firm, we were retained by the bankruptcy Trustee of Lehman for a $20 billion dispute with one of its affiliates. The settlement reached in that matter, the result of years of arduous negotiations, resolved unprecedented legal issues stemming from complex intercompany relationships among Lehman’s three principal businesses worldwide, Lehman Brothers Inc., Lehman Brothers International Europe, and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and was deemed by the Bankruptcy Judge in that case to be “very creative,” “truly remarkable,” and “a comprehensive consensual resolution of one of the most complex matters ever to be resolved in history.”