Formidable in a myriad of practice areas, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher remains one of the most in-demand and influential firms in litigation. With offices across the country, especially in major markets, there is no shortage of nationally recognized litigators who dutifully uphold the firm’s exceptional reputation. “Gibson Dunn is doing a good job in having an array of people in a variety of cases,” sums up one contemporary, who also notes, “And it’s also cross-ideological. They have people who are more liberal and others who are more conservative, and yet they all work well together very professionally.” Already comprehensively entrenched nationally, Gibson Dunn remains in growth mode; in September 2022, the firm welcomed former Fifth Circuit judge
Gregg Costa to its Houston’s office. Costa is a celebrated figure in this market and has been focused on building out that office’s civil trials and white-collar capacity.
A diverse team that included Dallas-based partner Veronica Moyé and California’s Daniel Swanson and Richard Doren defended Apple in a high-profile and historic antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games, challenging the client’s business model and practices relating to its App Store and alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act and the California Unfair Competition Law. Following a 16-day bench trial last May, the team secured several victories. The District Court upheld Apple’s core design choices at issue, and while the court imposed an injunction after agreeing with the unfair competition claims, the team successfully appealed that decision, and the Ninth Circuit Court stayed the injunction. The court also ordered the plaintiff to pay damages equivalent to 30% of the revenue it received from an unauthorized payment mechanism implemented in its Fortnite app without Apple’s consent. The case, referred to colloquially as “the World War III of antitrust” is now on appeal but “Round One” was a decisive win for the tech giant with counsel from the Gibson Dunn team. Doren was specifically mentioned for his work and demeanor as an opponent in the Epic case. “I found him incredibly easy to deal with – he was a gentleman,” they said. “He tells a story, keeps his eye on the ball, and lets things go when you should let them go – really enjoyed being in the courtroom with him every day.” Two of the other partners on the case are nationally recognized for their antitrust expertise: Swanson is a national antitrust star and Moyé continues her reign in the Top 250 Women in Litigation.
Gibson Dunn has a long and storied history of dominance in the appellate arena, and this year has been no exception. “Their briefs were just so well written and terrific,” declares one appeals-focused contemporary. In April 2022, a team composed of DC appellate star Thomas Dupree and a crack duo of trial luminaries from New York,
Orin Snyder and Anne Champion, secured a victory for GE, persuading the Second Circuit to affirm the dismissal of a $1.1 billion lawsuit on
forum non conveniens grounds. The plaintiffs, an Angolan energy company and its subsidiary, sued GE, along with the nation of Angola and top officials of the Angolan government, alleging that three GE affiliates interfered with the plaintiffs’ relationship with the Angolan government, causing the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in business with Angola.Allyson Ho, based in the Dallas office, triumphed for Visa, obtaining a reversal of a decision concerning a merchant of Fifth Third Bank (a member of Visa’s network) that was hacked two times in as many years, exposing millions of cardholders’ personal data, for which the merchant was slapped with a $14 million fee after an independent investigator determined the merchant violated the stated terms of Visa data-safety program. The merchant sued, alleging that this data-security program was unlawful and unenforceable, a position the trial court agreed with. Ho also teamed up with Dallas’
Trey Cox to defend Reddit in a sweeping nationwide putative class action filed in the Central District of California. Plaintiffs allege that Reddit violated state and federal law by knowingly benefitting financially from videos and images posted to Reddit’s websites featuring underage victims; violated its duty to report those materials; received and distributed child pornography; and violated California consumer protection statutes.
The firm’s securities capacity has been particularly active in its offices on both coasts. In California,
Brian Lutz scored a victory for Meta and its senior officers in a securities case arising out of news in March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had misappropriated Meta user data and then lied to Meta about deleting that data. In the wake of this, Meta’s stock price experienced two substantial single-day stock drops and triggered widespread Congressional, regulatory, and media scrutiny into Meta’s data privacy practices and disclosures. The Northern District of California granted dismissal, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to sufficiently allege that any Meta senior officers knew that Cambridge Analytica had lied to Meta, retained Meta user data, and used that data in connection with the 2016 US presidential campaign. In the New York office,
Reed Brodsky won a victory in a hotly contested securities dispute in the Southern District of New York concerning SPACs, and also secured a dismissal of a case for Walgreens in a suit filed by the government in an attempt to enforce payment criteria for Hepatitis C drugs using the civil penalties and treble damages of the federal and state False Claims Act statutes.
Gibson Dunn has gained a steady profile in a host of other areas as well. New York’s
Dan Thomasch, whose diverse litigation basket balances mass tort and environmental work with other practices, is commended by a peer. “He’s a former colleague, and I always thought he was one of the best lawyers I’ve run across. I think everyone who knows him would say the same thing.” Another peer insists, “You need to look more at Gibson Dunn in the international arbitration space. They actually have
fewer arbitrations than other firms doing this, but their work is always of the very highest caliber.”
