S&R Associates has offices in Delhi and Mumbai. With market-leading capital markets and corporate practices, its dispute resolution offering aligns with that strength and routinely works with clients on complex commercial and transactional, regulatory and intellectual property disputes. It also handles investor-state arbitration and bilateral investment treaty claims, and anti-corruption and internal investigations. The team values quality over quantity and is sought after for complex, high-value disputes. The disputes lawyers have appeared extensively before all levels of the courts and various international arbitration forums. It recently promoted two counsels to the partnership and the team is now led by four partners and 10 other lawyers.
Key figures in the disputes practice are partners Niti Dixit, Shahezad Kazi, Abhishek Tewari and Raunaq Mathur. Dixit is known for her commercial litigation, arbitration and regulatory work.
The team represented Cairn Energy and Cairn UK Holdings in a major investment treaty claim against India arising out of retrospective amendments to India’s tax laws, a vexed issue that has been the subject of considerable attention within and outside India. The Indian Parliament ultimately amended its tax legislation and framed regulations to enable the repayment of the amounts recovered from Cairn UK Holdings.
The team continues to act for F Hoffmann-La Roche and Genentech in their civil claims against the Drugs Controller General of India and certain Indian manufacturers of purported biosimilar versions of the client’s blockbuster breast and gastric cancer drug, Trastuzumab. The claims filed by Roche and Genentech in this regard were the first of their kind in India. This is the first set of matters in India where a claim of biosimilarity to a drug has been challenged under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and India’s Guidelines for Similar Biologics. Several of Roche’s contentions in these proceedings have contributed, in part, to the enactment of new rules relating to clinical testing of biosimilar drugs in India. These are also the first matters in which the Delhi High Court constituted a confidentiality club for the disclosure of confidential and proprietary documents relating to the manufacture and clinical testing of the purported biosimilars.
The team represented AM Mining India Private, an ArcelorMittal group company, as a resolution applicant for Uttam Galva Steels under the Indian insolvency code.
Medha Servo Drives Private engaged the firm in a dispute related to a tender for the monorail train project in Mumbai. Other bidders challenged the tender process and the award to the client on the grounds of unfairness, arbitrariness and loss to exchequers. The S&R team successfully prevented grant of any interim orders in proceedings filed by the contesting party before the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court of India.
Active clients include ArcelorMittal Group, Capricorn Energy, Cipher-Plexus Capital Advisors, InterGlobe Aviation, McDonald’s, Nine Rivers Capital and Rocksource.
Client feedback
“They are very good in understanding the core litigation issue and advising the client on what pertinent arguments would be material for the adjudication of issue at hand. They are driven to ensure all materials are passed over to the arguing counsel and that they are up to speed on the matter with limited briefing.” – Commercial and transactions
Shahezad Kazi
“He is very proactive, solutions-oriented, clear in his conceptualisation and expression and very attentive to all details of the litigation. He is pro-client and does a lot of thinking on his feet.”
