New York

Firm overview

Since its founding in 1996, Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP has provided the most sophisticated counsel to clients across the country in their highest-stakes matters. The firm remains small by design, preserving a model that demands the utmost standards, personal attention, and a focus on efficiency.

HNRK lawyers bring decades of experience at leading Am Law 100 law firms and government agencies, and are recognized for excellence in commercial litigation generally, and in the specific areas of insurance recovery, employment, white collar defense, construction disputes, and the representation of public agencies.

Main Areas of Practice:

Commercial Litigation & Dispute Resolution: HNRK lawyers litigate large-scale, complex, and sophisticated matters in federal and state trial and appellate courts and arbitral forums nationwide. HNRK has successfully represented individuals and businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, in a full range of business disputes and has handled numerous matters with billions of dollars at stake. HNRK attorneys are creative and resourceful in identifying best approaches to resolve client matters and in quickly assembling effective, efficient, and tightly focused teams to address and resolve potential or actual disputes cost-effectively and with maximal benefit to the client. Among other high-profile trials, the firm recently represented plaintiffs in an intellectual property licensing dispute involving the famous Palm restaurant, resulting in a $120 million award at trial, unanimously affirmed by the New York appellate court.

Insurance Recovery Litigation & Counseling: HNRK represents policyholders only. Beyond that, the firm places no limits on its leading insurance practice, which has secured hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars for its clients. HNRK is regularly sought out by corporate policyholders to advise and represent them in complex and valuable insurance coverage disputes. The firm is known for its ability to aggressively and creatively develop solutions to maximize clients’ insurance recoveries. Among other engagements, HNRK serves as coverage counsel to the world’s largest agrochemical company, Syngenta, and the communications, media, and automotive conglomerate, Cox—regularly advising and representing them in connection with losses and claims implicating numerous different types of coverage. The firm is also coverage counsel for high-profile individuals and has obtained coverage for clients facing headline-grabbing claims. The firm has delivered successful outcomes for clients through litigations in courts around the country, as well as through arbitrations and mediations in the U.S. and internationally, and through negotiated settlements. The firm recently won a trial in the Delaware Superior Court for Syngenta in a case implicating hundreds of millions of dollars of losses arising from thousands of personal injury claims; in a precedential decision, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s two summary judgment rulings in favor of Syngenta.

Employment Litigation & Counseling: HNRK’s Employment Litigation & Counseling practice is unique in that its employment attorneys have significant expertise in litigation through trial and arbitration, including at administrative agencies. HNRK stands ready to further clients’ interests, whether they are startups or large multinationals, public sector or private, international or domestic. HNRK represents management clients in employment litigation involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or illegal pay practices; prosecuting or defending claims arising from restrictive covenants; and other employment-related agreements. HNRK also conducts internal investigations for company clients regarding all kinds of discrimination and retaliation claims, and its partners are members of the Association of Workplace Investigators.

Construction Litigation & Counseling: HNRK has extensive experience counseling, litigating, and arbitrating on behalf of public and private clients in the construction, engineering, and real estate fields in matters involving project delays, change order disputes, differing site conditions, and other contract issues. This experience includes, for example, the firm’s longtime representation of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York and its affiliated operating authorities in connection with its capital construction program, in addition to the firm’s representation of private contractors. HNRK’s insurance recovery practice also includes representation of policyholders in construction-related insurance claims, where insurance for alleged construction damage may be challenged by the insurer.

White Collar Defense & Government Investigations: HNRK represents individuals and corporations facing a broad spectrum of complex government investigations, regulatory issues, and civil and criminal litigation, including foreign criminal and tax investigations. The successes secured on behalf of clients include favorable outcomes in cases involving internal corporate investigations of alleged securities fraud; government investigations of alleged corporate wrongdoing; and the Securities Exchange Act, Investment Company Act, Investment Advisers Act, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

HNRK is certified by the State of New York and the City of New York as a Women-Owned Business Enterprise.

Practice Areas and Industries:

• Commercial Litigation & Dispute Resolution
• Insurance Recovery Litigation & Counseling
• Employment Litigation & Counseling
• Construction Litigation & Counseling
• White Collar Defense & Government Investigations

Updated Sep 2024

Firm overview

Cohen Ziffer Frenchman & McKenna LLP, which opened its doors in New York in January 2021, is built on the reputations and experience of nationally recognized lawyers who have worked together and represented policyholders as a unified team for more than 20 years, recovering billions of dollars for their clients and securing landmark judicial rulings. The group has earned a national reputation as fierce advocates for policyholders in high-profile, high-dollar disputes against insurance companies. The team—which has tripled in size since the firm’s founding—represents a client base of Fortune 500 companies, hedge funds, and private equity firms.

Many of those recoveries have come in closely watched cases, including a first-of-its-kind appellate decision on flood limit clauses that allowed New Jersey Transit to access $400 million in coverage after Superstorm Sandy. For a pump manufacturer, the firm won a precedent-setting $500 million ruling over insurance coverage for asbestos liabilities. And on issues at the frontier of insurance law, the firm has won multiple significant rulings—dealing with, for instance, damage from email spoofing under computer crime policies and a first-impression test of insurance coverage for SPACs. The firm has also earned a reputation for gaining precedent-setting rulings and shifting the landscape of D&O and E&O coverage in favor of policyholders.

Additional precedent-setting wins in recent high-profile disputes include:

• A rare jury verdict reversal for Conduent State Healthcare in its pursuit of insurance coverage from AIG and other insurers for defense costs relating to a $236 million Medicaid fraud settlement. It was the first jury verdict that Delaware Superior Court Judge Mary Johnston reversed in her nearly 20 years on the bench.
• A series of significant victories for Walmart in a lawsuit against nearly 40 insurance carriers related to coverage for hundreds of millions of dollars in defense costs incurred in defending against thousands of lawsuits arising out of the sale and distribution of opioids and related settlements totaling more than $3 billion. The team recently defeated efforts by dozens of Walmart’s insurers to dismiss their Arkansas action and earned a precedent-setting ruling establishing Walmart’s right to coverage for defense costs incurred in opioid lawsuits.
• A Delaware court ruling that directors and officers of Clover Health Investments Corp. count as “insured persons” under a D&O policy issued to Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp., a SPAC that took Clover Health public. In one of the first decisions addressing coverage for a SPAC, the court ruled that the SPAC’s D&O insurers must pay defense costs for not only the SPAC itself, but also for its future officers and directors.
• A favorable decision for Paramount Global (f/k/a Viacom Inc.), finding that Viacom’s insurers cannot rely on a bump-up exclusion to avoid covering the $122.5 million settlement that had resolved Viacom shareholders’ lawsuit over the company’s merger with CBS.
• A win for Crystal Windows & Doors Ltd. in a dispute over coverage owed for alleged construction defects that allegedly caused over $20 million in damages. The New York Supreme Court dismissed the insurer’s action seeking to resolve its indemnity obligation as premature and, in a precedent-setting ruling, held that the insurer’s acknowledged duty to defend also required the insurer to pay the insured’s costs in defending against the coverage action.

With decades of insurance recovery and advisory experience, Cohen Ziffer also assists clients with their insurance counseling needs, guiding organizations through complex insurance issues and advising on the insurance coverage that is right for them. The firm’s attorneys work with clients and their insurance brokers to identify the most likely liability risks and to review their insurance policies and advise on whether they are likely to cover those risks. When incidents do occur, they also guide their clients through the insurance claims process.

The firm’s commercial litigators are first-rate trial lawyers who also have experience tackling a host of complex commercial insurance disputes on behalf of organizations across the country, and have handled a spectrum of very large, complex, high-stakes, and cutting-edge cases. The team litigates these high-stakes coverage suits in a variety of state and federal courts and tribunals and jurisdictions around the world, and represents organizations in a diverse array of economic sectors, including financial services, manufacturing, professional services, and real estate.

Practice Areas:

• Insurance Recovery
• Insurance Advisory Services
• Commercial Litigation

Updated Aug 2024

Firm overview

Kirkland & Ellis LLP is a global law firm with more than 3,500 attorneys representing clients in private equity, M&A and other complex corporate transactions, litigation and dispute resolution/arbitration, restructuring, and intellectual property matters. The Firm has offices in 20 cities around the world: Austin, Bay Area, Beijing, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Munich, New York, Paris, Riyadh, Salt Lake City, Shanghai and Washington, D.C.

Litigation:
Kirkland & Ellis is renowned for its experience in complex litigation and arbitration. The Firm believes that the best litigation results occur when the lawyers are fully prepared to try the case through verdict. Because of Kirkland’s trial-ready philosophy and training, the Firm is able to offer clients a deep bench of lawyers who have been taking cases to verdict since the early stages of their careers. Whether in the courtroom, at the bargaining table or helping clients avoid risks without litigation, Kirkland has a long and proven track record of generating successful results for clients in their most high-stakes cases matters.

The Litigation Practice Group comprises approximately 625 attorneys throughout the firm’s worldwide offices. Kirkland represents clients in trial and appellate courts at the federal and state level, before administrative tribunals, and in arbitrations and other dispute resolution proceedings. The Firm also represents clients in connection with proceedings involving government agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, US Attorneys General Offices, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the New York Stock Exchange, the US Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the US Patent and Trademark Office, the US Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service.

Kirkland litigators have successfully litigated cases in virtually every substantive area and business segment including accountant liability, antitrust and competition, appellate, class action, mass tort and toxic tort, insurance, data privacy, labor and employment, breach of contract and securities litigation.

Kirkland has been recognized by clients and the media for its achievements in litigation:

• For the 13th time, Kirkland was selected as one of the “Fearsome Foursome” in BTI Consulting’s 2024 Litigation Outlook report.
• Chambers & Partners named Kirkland & Ellis “Commercial Litigation Law Firm of the Year” at the 2023 Chambers USA Awards.
• In 2023, Kirkland ranked #1 in The Lawyer’s “Global Litigation Top 50,” the sixth consecutive year the Firm earned that distinction.
• Kirkland was named “Law Firm of the Year” for Commercial Litigation by U.S. News and World Report and Best Lawyers in their 2022 “Best Law Firms” rankings.

Intellectual Property Litigation:
Kirkland & Ellis’ Intellectual Property Practice Group is one of the oldest such practices in a full-service firm in the country, having been an integral part of Kirkland since 1925. Kirkland has approximately 200 intellectual property lawyers who are experienced in a variety of technical disciplines and registered to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office. More than 70 percent of the lawyers are engineers and scientists trained with degrees and professional backgrounds in technical areas. Kirkland has one of the most respected intellectual property litigation practices in the country, with particular experience in large-scale patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret misappropriation and advertising matters. The work of the group frequently extends to antitrust, securities/compliance, products liability and appellate matters. Kirkland’s experience in venues where IP cases are most often litigated is extensive. The Firm tries cases before juries, judges and arbitrators in venues across the country including state courts, district courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the International Trade Commission and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Kirkland has one of the most active trial practices in the country. Our success rate at trial is among the best, with only a few of losses over the last 10 years despite handling some of the most challenging litigation cases in history.

The Intellectual Property Practice Group has been recognized by numerous publications for its achievements:

• In Managing Intellectual Property’s 2024 IP Stars, Kirkland was named as a Tier 1 firm for Copyright, ITC, Life Sciences, Patent Contentious and Trademark Contentious and was recognized in the U.S. for IP transactions and PTAB litigation.
• Kirkland was named to World Trademark Review magazine’s 2024 WTR 1000
list of the world’s top trademark law firms and was recognized as a Tier 1 firm for enforcement and litigation nationally and in New York.
• In 2024, Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine recognized Kirkland in Tier 1 for Litigation, International Trade Commission and Trade Secrets for United States -National in its IAM Patent 1000 guide. The firm was also Tier 1 for Litigation in Illinois, New York and Washington, D.C., as well as Transactions in Illinois.
• World Intellectual Property Review (WIPR) recognized Kirkland & Ellis as a Tier 1 firm in its 2022 “Global Trade Secrets Rankings.”

Please visit our website at www.kirkland.com for additional information about Kirkland and office contact information.

Updated July 2024

Firm overview

With more than 60 years of experience, Labaton Keller Sucharow stands as a tenacious advocate for investors, having secured billions of dollars in landmark recoveries. Renowned as a global leader in complex litigation, the Firm specializes in representing clients in securities, corporate governance, shareholder rights, and consumer protection and data privacy litigation, as well as alternative dispute resolution. Labaton Keller Sucharow’s successful reputation is built not only on its team of more than 90 attorneys, but also on its industry-leading in-house investigators, financial analysts, and forensic accountants.

Recognized for excellence by both the courts and peers, the Firm is consistently ranked in leading industry publications.

Labaton Keller Sucharow’s offices are strategically located in New York, Delaware, London, and Washington, D.C. More information about Labaton Keller Sucharow is available at www.labaton.com.