With seven of its 12 global offices situated strategically throughout the US, Proskauer provides a wide range of services to clients across a broad spectrum of practices ranging from commercial to intellectual property, securities to white-collar crime and investigations, as well as its near-unparalleled status in specialty areas of employment, entertainment and sports law.
The firm has also seen a pronounced spike in its bankruptcy profile, solidly on the strength of its mammoth appointment as lead outside counsel to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, which was created to oversee the restructuring of Puerto Rico's finances, valued at $125 billion, in accordance with the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA.) The Board's mandate is to return Puerto Rico to fiscal health with access to the capital markets, and to initiate pro-growth reforms designed to generate a free flow of capital between Puerto Rico and the US. This long-running and sprawling action involves a team of Proskauer attorneys from numerous offices, including Boston’s Timothy Mungovan, New York’s Martin Bienenstock and Margaret Dale, and Los Angeles’ Michael Firestein, all of whom have played substantial roles in the manifold turns of action in this matter since its beginnings. Dale, a commercial litigator who has made a noted pivot to bankruptcy, is involved in several other Puerto Rico-related issues, primarily dealing with employee retirement issues. Mungovan, the firm’s Chair and immediate past head of litigation, has developed a vocal peer following. One extols,
“I think he’s superb. He’s not just a figurehead – the guy is a seriously good lawyer, absolutely dynamite.”
LA’s Bart Williams, not only one of the firm’s most celebrated trial lawyers but also the country’s, has been at the forefront of several milestone matters every year, with this one being no exception. “Bart is the driver of Proskauer’s litigation practice in LA,” insists a local peer. “His practice is just so spectacular, and what he says is very important.” Williams acted with LA’s
Susan Gutierrez as trial counsel for Gilead Sciences, securing a landmark win in a $3.6 billion antitrust case on allegations that the pharmaceutical company struck an anticompetitive "pay-for-delay" patent settlement related to two of its HIV medications. In July 2023, a San Francisco jury delivered a full defense verdict following a six-week trial. Williams, along with swiftly rising New York star Lee Popkin, was also trial counsel for Monsanto in a jury trial that was scheduled to commence in March 2023 in San Francisco. The case was brought by an alleged former user of the Monsanto herbicide Roundup and his wife, who claimed that Roundup caused him to develop non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The matter settled favorably for the client on the eve of the trial. LA’s Shawn Ledingham, a future star with a burgeoning following, was also part of the team. “I think the world of him,” opines a peer, confiding, “I wish I could hire him! I think he’s going to be heard about in national cases in another five years.” Another LA-based future star, Vinay Kohli, a healthcare-focused partner, is cheered by a peer as “so underrated – more people need to be talking about him, including Benchmark!”
Proskauer has been particularly active, and successful, in the antitrust capacity as of late. Chris Ondeck, co-head of the firm’s antitrust group and co-head of its DC office, scored big for Wayne Farms when, after nearly seven years of litigation, he secured a complete victory at summary judgment in the broiler chicken litigation, in which plaintiffs alleged that the top 21 chicken producers in the US, including the client, unlawfully agreed to work together to reduce the supply of chicken over a 10-year period as part of a two-hub conspiracy. Plaintiffs claimed damages valued at $45 billion in total. Wayne Farms is one of a small group of defendants that has not settled any part of the case, and instead proceeded to summary judgment. In June 2023, the court granted summary judgment in favor of Wayne Farms and six other defendants, with one additional defendant (who, while being represented by another firm, was not granted summary judgment) is scheduled to proceed to trial in September 2023. Ondeck also led a team that included Ledingham and two other antitrust partners, DC’s
Colin Kass and LA’s Colin Cabral, to secure a landmark victory for Sanderson Farms against the same allegations. The Proskauer team defeated a damages claim totaling more than $7 billion, which, had the jury ruled against Sanderson, would have been automatically trebled.
New York’s Brad Ruskin remains as active as ever in matters concerning the firm’s famed sports practice, with a carousel of cases on the go for various athletic leagues and associations. Ruskinis defending Major League Soccer (MLS) against a federal lawsuit brought by the North American Soccer League (NASL) against MLS and the US Soccer Federation following US Soccer’s decision not to sanction NASL as a Division II professional league for the 2018 season. NASL alleges that MLS and U.S. Soccer are engaged in an antitrust conspiracy to ensure that MLS is the sole Division I soccer league in the United States, and further alleges that MLS is an illegal monopoly. A trial has been scheduled for September 2024.
Sandra Crawshaw-Sparks, who divides her time between New York and LA, helms another celebrated Proskauer pillar practice, entertainment litigation. Crawshaw-Sparks is defending Live Nation and Madonna in a class action alleging breach of contract and false advertising in connection with alleged late starts for shows in Madonna’s Celebration Tour.
