Massachusetts

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. In the latest chapter of this saga, in March 2023, the firm team prevailed in litigation against the Governor and Legislature of Puerto Rico seeking to nullify a statute that made numerous, sweeping changes to the employment laws in Puerto Rico and imposed significant restrictions on private employers in violation of the Oversight Board’s certified Fiscal Plan. Because the Governor violated PROMESA by failing to submit required evidence showing that the statute was consistent with the Fiscal Plan, the Court nullified the law. The Governor and Legislature have filed urgent appeals to the First Circuit, and the Legislature and Governor have both sought stays of the District Court’s ruling. Also in March 2023, the Proskauer team achieved a significant victory on behalf of the Oversight Board in ongoing litigation regarding bonds issued by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the sole electricity provider on the island.
     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. Williams is trial counsel for Gilead Sciences in several high-stakes matters. One involves thousands of California state and federal product liability actions brought by approximately 20,000 plaintiffs related to Gilead’s life-saving HIV prevention and treatment drugs. The cases allege that Gilead was negligent in its development of certain of these drugs and that they were defectively designed and failed adequately to warn about the increased risk of potential kidney disease and bone injury that could result from use of these medications. The first federal bellwether trial is set for January 2024. In another matter, Williams scored a landmark win for this same client, securing a significant trial victory 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.

     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. Another DC-based antitrust co-chair, Colin Kass represents Bright Data, a web data service with a specialty in artificial intelligence, in its multi-jurisdictional litigation against social media behemoth Meta, who, in December 2022, issued a cease-and-desist notice against the client, claiming that its user terms prohibit scraping its websites. The duo of Ondeck and Kass worked in tandem on yet another poultry-related antitrust matter on behalf of Butterball in a case involving an alleged information exchange conspiracy. Plaintiffs, turkey purchasers, allege that major turkey producers around the country, including Butterball, fixed prices, agreed to reduce output, and exchanged confidential information through Agri Stats, a subscription benchmarking service, in order to curb supply and raise the price of turkey to artificially high levels.

With a legal footprint spanning over 16 offices in numerous jurisdictions around the country, including New York, Chicago, DC, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and West Palm Beach outfits, Saul Ewing’s litigation team is equipped with an arsenal of diverse practice specializations. Among the most notable and active of the firm’s area specializations are its commercial, higher education, real estate, and white collar practices.

     Among the firm’s most exalted is litigation chair Cathleen Devlin of Saul Ewing’s Philadelphia office, who emphasizes in her practice complex environmental, commercial contract, and business tort litigation. Devlin currently serves alongside environmental civil litigation and appellate chair John Stoviak as lead counsel to Cyprus Amax Minerals Company in environmental litigation against TCI Pacific Communications regarding Cyprus’s pursuit of more than $14 million of recovery from TCI. The matter arises in connection with Cyprus’s environmental investigation and remediation as to arsenic, cadmium, and lead soil contamination allegedly attributable to 20th century zinc smelting operations in Oklahoma. Following Devlin and Stoviak’s obtainment of an alter ego summary judgement ruling entitling Cyprus to CERCLA contribution from TCI and a corresponding award of $14.2 million, a total which covers 45% of associated cleanup costs through 2017, TCI sought appeal of the ruling on the Tenth Circuit and was met with a complete affirmance. TCI currently seeks a Tenth Circuit rehearing.

     On the higher education front, the fount of the firm’s acuity is largely indexable to Joseph O’Dea, Jr. of Chicago; Wilmington, Delaware-based litigation vice chair and co-chair of the higher education practice group James Taylor, Jr.; and, also serving as co-chair of higher education in addition to co-chair of the K-12 schools practice, Chicago’s James Keller. Whereas O’Dea continues in the critical role of counsel for Pennsylvania State University in all litigation regarding the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal, Keller is active in the role of counsel to Pennsylvania College of Technology (PCT) in a bellwether class action filed against PCT wherein plaintiffs seek partial tuition reimbursement as a result of the transition to online learning following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The matter will address novel and salient questions as to the contractual obligations of an institution to its students and the legal approximations of remote education’s quality.

     Also hailing from the firm’s Chicago office, commercial litigator Amy Kline directs her focus on the representation of insurance and reinsurance companies, as well as institutions of higher education. Joined by Boston partner Joseph Lipchitz, Kline currently represents Merck & Co. in litigation filed against Bayer AG regarding Merck’s sale of the Dr. Scholl’s line of products to Bayer under a stock and asset purchase agreement (SAPA). The matter arises following Bayer’s refusal to honor the terms of the SAPA, which stipulate that certain product-related claims in connection with currently unfolding and highly public talcum powder liability actions would transition to Bayer’s purview in 2021 after a specified period during which they remained Merck’s responsibility. Following an attempt on Bayer’s part to dispel itself of liability, Merck retained the firm and filed suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery.

     At the firm’s Baltimore office, partners Jason St. John and Charles Monk, II are currently defending the Maryland State Board of Education against a landmark government and education class action brought by parents of City of Baltimore schoolchildren in an attempt to revive a suit dating back to the 1990s, regarding claims that the state’s allegedly inadequate levels of funding and vital resources constitute a violation under Article VIII of the State Constitution.

     In Boston, complex commercial litigators Lipchitz and Jeffrey Robbins recently defended Muslim civil rights advocate Lori Saroya in a defamation suit filed against Saroya by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), of which she previously served as a member of the national board, in connection with Saroya’s censuring of CAIR’s purported conduct of negligence as to sexual harassment and discrimination. Lipchitz and Robbins were successful in obtaining CAIR’s unconditional withdrawal with prejudice from the suit following two hearings before a US Magistrate and another before the US District Court Judge presiding over the matter.

With a network of international and domestic offices, WilmerHale has built a reputation as a global powerhouse. Nationally, the firm’s original mainstay in Boston continues to secure near-unanimous recognition in litigation, and the New York, DC and California offices have further bolstered the firm’s top-tier standing. It is lauded for its litigation capabilities nationwide, particularly antitrust, white-collar, securities and appellate, as well as intellectual property, one of the firm’s most notable practices.

Boston-based trial lawyer Bill Lee is of the most accomplished litigators in intellectual property. He continues to add to his enviable list of milestone patent wins, which have earned him a long-standing reputation in the practice area. In these high-stakes cases, he is well known for his distinguishing ability to translate his encyclopedic knowledge into comprehensive arguments that sway judges and juries. Lee and Denver’s Mary “Mindy” Sooter obtained a damages-less win for Comcast in a patent infringement lawsuit brought by NextStep. Last September in Delaware, the federal jury found in favor of the client on two of the challenged patents, and returned a “doctrine of equivalents” infringement verdict on the last patent. Sooter and Lee secured the zero-dollar victory with a granted motion to preclude the plaintiff’s damages case.

In the appellate arena, Lee also obtained positive results working with appellate expert Seth Waxman of the DC office. The duo represented Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie against the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) before the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The FTC filed a case alleging that the lawsuits filed by AbbVie against Teva and Perrigo were shams, thus violating the FTC Act. The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of the FTC, which AbbVie appealed. The Third Circuit in parts affirmed, reversed, and vacated the District Court’s decision. Notably, the appellate court held that its lawsuit against Teva was not a sham, and the court vacated the disgorgement award. On the Perrigo matter, the Third Circuit upheld the District Court decision that the suit was objectively baseless, which Lee and Waxman challenged in a petition for certiorari that was denied. However, in a complete victory, the FTC dropped the entire case.

Waxman serves as chair of the firm’s appellate and Supreme Court litigation practice, with, as one peer notes, “an army of talent behind him”. Such talent includes Noah Levine, who represented the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) in a putative class action challenging non-judicial foreclosures in Rhode Island, arguing that the client and co-defendant violated the Due Process Clause as plaintiffs also argued that the defendants should be considered government actors. The District Court rejected both arguments, dismissing the complaints. On appeal, the First Circuit upheld the decision, securing a win for the client.

In New York, commercial litigator Hallie Levin obtained a win for T-Mobile in a five-day bench trial before the Delaware Court of Chancery. The trial arose from a settlement agreement between T-Mobile and Cox Communications that concluded a patent infringement case. In the agreement, Cox agreed that should it begin offering retail customers wireless services, it would be done in accordance with a wholesale wireless agreement with Sprint, which T-Mobile acquired. Cox and another mobile network later entered into a wholesale wireless agreement, and sued the client last January, arguing that the provision was unenforceable. Acting on behalf of T-Mobile, Levin filed counterclaims and requested an injunction to enforce the exclusivity obligation. The District Court found that Cox had breached the agreement and the provision was enforceable. The court issued an injunction preventing Cox from offering mobile services with any other operator.

On the West Coast, Sonal Mehta is continuously recognized as a top-tier litigator in the IP space, especially for her role representing titans of the life sciences and technology industry. Recently, she represented Ionpath, a venture-backed start-up by three Stanford professors who sought to commercialize their technology for biological tissue analysis, against competitor Fluidigm. The Northern District of California, in an accelerated patent “showdown” procedure, ruled Ionpath did not infringe the “showdown” claims. After the decision, Fluidigm dismissed its interference with contract claims, and later the plaintiff dismissed the rest of the claims in its appeal. The matter closed confidentially.