Benchmark Litigation

Pennsylvania

Review

Dispute resolution
Blank Rome

With 15 offices (14 throughout the US and one in Shanghai, China,) the practitioners of Blank Rome are revered most notably for their activity in the insurance recovery space. The crown jewel of the firm, the insurance team takes on cutting-edge matters on behalf of leading corporations and institutions, distinguishing itself from its peers by providing counsel exclusively to policyholders. Members of the insurance group are acclaimed by clients for the laudable breadth of their expertise in, among other matters, complex insurance litigation and disputes arising from manuscript policies, and are additionally recognized as “responsive and providing sound advice.” Clients go on to praise Blank Rome’s insurance specialists for being “abreast of the latest commercial developments.” While policyholder-side insurance work may be what the firm is most celebrated for, it is making strides in other areas as well; its New York office recently benefitted from the auspicious recruits of Craig Weiner and Lisa Coyle, two all-purpose commercial litigators who joined Blank Rome in the spring of 2023. More recently, in August 2024, the firm took on Jeffrey Schulman, a revered New York-based partner previously with the (now-defunct) Pasich firm, once helmed by insurance luminary Kirk Pasich.
     New York-based Jared Zola, provided lead counsel in a $25 million coronavirus business-interruption litigation for Urban Edge Properties involving insurance policies that expressly provide coverage for the presence of viruses. The client sought coverage from its pollution-liability insurer for losses from the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic. The insurer filed a motion for summary judgment seeking to end the entire case as a matter of law. After Zola presented oral argument for Urban Edge, in January 2023, the court issued an order denying the summary judgment motion. Zola makes the impressive leap from future star to litigation star in this edition. DC-based Omid Safa scored big in September 2022 when the Safa-led firm team secured a favorable jury verdict in favor of asset-based lender The CIT Group/Equipment Financing in an aviation insurance case involving a complex dispute over coverage for multimillion-dollar losses resulting from the confiscation of an aircraft by Brazilian tax authorities. The jury found that CIT had met its burden to establish coverage for involved a complex dispute over coverage for multimillion-dollar losses resulting from the confiscation of an aircraft by Brazilian government. As a result, CIT will be awarded the full amount of its multimillion-dollar damages claims (which were established on summary judgment) and statutory interest. The current value of the award is currently $5 million.
     Insurance DC-based co-chair James Murray garners praise for the deep insurance knowledge that he makes available to leaders in the corporate space, government entities, and religious institutions, among others, in their most sensitive and critical matters, often pertaining to sexual abuse liability and COVID-related coverage claims. Murray serves as court-appointed special insurance counsel to the debtors in two Catholic organization bankruptcies that were successfully confirmed in 2022. Murray also served in the role of lead insurance counsel to real estate developer Combined Properties as the company seeks over $100 million in coverage following the destruction of a mixed-use development in connection with a recent and catastrophic fire in Fairfax County, VA. Murray was joined at the helm of this matter by his fellow star and DC partner John Gibbons. Murray is additionally working alongside his fellow insurance recovery co-chair, Los Angeles-based Linda Kornfeld, who continues to demonstrate her recovery prowess and maintains the position of being among the firm’s most active and capable practitioners. Kornfeld and Murray boast recent heavy involvement in the COVID-19 business interruption space, leading more than a dozen recovery actions each seeking hundreds of millions of dollars. One such matter, this Blank Rome duo also represents the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles in insurance coverage litigation against FM Insurance in litigation involving the Eagles’ $1 billion property and business-interruption policy. Murray and Kornfeld are helping the Eagles recover their COVID-19 losses stemming from their inability to use their stadium for the 2020 football season, as well as for star-studded 2020 summer concerts and major soccer and lacrosse events due to the pandemic. Gibbons meanwhile acts with Safa on behalf of Nooter in connection with the enforcement and recovery of insurance proceeds for Nooter and are now engaged in two competing actions in Missouri courts.

Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check

Based in the Philadelphia suburb of Radnor, Pennsylvania, plaintiff heavyweights Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check have scored nationwide wins in the class-actions sphere. Clients voice appreciation for its partners being “well prepared in analysis of cases,” and “keeping the client informed.” While domiciled in suburban Pennsylvania, the firm’s ambitions have taken it global. “Kessler Topaz has a lot of penetration in the European market. They spent a lot of money on that, and it has paid off. They realized that there was a space in Europe where they did not know there was a class-action market at all, and so they built a monitoring practice with them. This has grown to the point where they are representing institutional investors in the US as well.”

In a recent example of the rewards of the firm’s overseas entrepreneurialism, Kessler Topaz scored a major win in February 2022, when a $1.6 billion global settlement became effective with Steinhoff International Holdings, Steinhoff auditor Deloitte & Touche South Africa, and Steinhoff’s former directors and officers and their D&O insurers. The settlement is purportedly the largest securities settlement outside the US to date. It resolves claims brought by Steinhoff common stock shareholders before courts in the Netherlands, Germany, and South Africa for losses they sustained as a result of Steinhoff’s December 2017 revelation that it had discovered accounting irregularities and that it had overstated profits by $7.4 billion between 2009 and 2017. Kessler Topaz, representing more than 40 institutional investors from around the globe, initially filed legal action in the Netherlands, seeking recovery of investor losses and a judicial examination.

Stuart Berman is particularly noted for his non-US litigation practice, as is Darren Check. The latter is praised by a client as “very knowledgeable and informative” and someone who “always keeps his clients up to date on the status of cases.”

While the firm has been primarily lauded for its securities practice, an area in which it has scored some of its most noteworthy victories, there has been a push toward antitrust cases as of late. In one example, Joseph Meltzer represents a class of plaintiffs who filed a Consolidated Class Action Complaint against pharmaceuticals entity Amarin, alleging that, having pursued and lost patent infringement litigation against would-be generic competitors as well as exhausting every regulatory means to prevent and delay the launch of generic competitors, Amarin adopted an unlawful strategy to artificially extend its monopoly for its sole product, Vascepa. By locking up every viable supplier of the key ingredient needed to manufacture generic Vascepa, Amarin boxed generic manufacturers out of the market. This scheme left Amarin free to continue charging supracompetitive prices and obtain the most profit it could out of Vascepa, at the expense of the plaintiffs and other purchasers of the drug. In another “antitrust-adjacent” matter, Meltzer and Check represent a class of plaintiffs, New Jersey municipalities, who filed a complaint against video programming and cable entities Netflix and Hulu, alleging that the defendants were required to file an application for individual certificates of approval or a system-wide franchise, in accordance with a New Jersey state statute, and failed to do so – and thus are providing cable television services throughout New Jersey without authorization and in contravention of the New Jersey Cable Television Act. Such certificates of approval and/or franchise would have authorized the defendants to use public rights-of-way to provide their cable television service and video programming, provided that defendants make payments to each municipality in which it provides service. The required payment is equal to a percentage of the gross revenues derived from subscription fees paid by subscribers in each municipality. The plaintiffs seek to require the defendants to abide by the CTA and pay what they owe to New Jersey municipalities.

Saul Ewing

Saul Ewing saw its genesis as a regional shop primarily focused on the Mid-Atlantic through its offices in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington and Newark and Princeton, New Jersey. It has since expanded its reach into Boston, West Palm Beach, Minneapolis and Chicago and, as of this past year, into California, officially bringing its national ambitions into fruition. The firm is appreciated by clients for “efficient, high-level legal services that are sensitive to the unique issues in the education industry, with a focus on client-centered advice that is cost effective for a non-profit entity. We use the firm because the lead counsel carefully reviews our needs and brings the necessary resources to help our businesses.”
     The firm’s dominance in the education area is undisputed, and acumen in this practice is frequently demonstrated by various partners. Jason St. John and Mark Simanowith, both in the Baltimore office, lead a team representing the Maryland State of Board of Education in defense of a challenge by a class of Baltimore City plaintiffs who are the parents of Baltimore City school children. Plaintiffs are attempting to revive a lawsuit from the early 1990’s and claim that the State has failed to comply with its constitutional duty to provide adequate education to Baltimore City school children, including adequate funding for Baltimore City public schools. Plaintiffs further claim that the State has failed to fix the crumbling school facilities in Baltimore City that leave children cold from broken heat systems in the winter, overheated from schools lacking air conditioning in the summer, and wet from pipe leaks throughout the year. The court granted the State’s motion for summary judgment on all claims in March 2023, and the case is now on appeal. Simanowith makes his debut as a future star in this edition. A former future star making the leap to litigation star in this edition, Philadelphia’s Josh Richards represents California Lutheran University in a case that arose when members of a softball team performed and placed on social media a routine where they dressed up as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air cast, with some of them coloring their faces darkly for the performance. The school responded to significant student concerns about the content of their performance and condemned its racial insensitivity. A lawsuit ensued, with two dozen plaintiffs suing the school on 13 counts, including defamation. “Josh is a smart, client-focused, fantastic attorney,” extols a client.
     Saul Ewing is plenty busy beyond the education capacity. John Stoviak and Cathleen Devlin, both resident in the Philadelphia office, serve as lead counsel defending Waste Management of Pennsylvania and Grand Central Sanitary Landfill in two putative class actions filed in by two groups of area residents, who alleged claims of negligence and public and private nuisance arising from alleged odors emanating from the client’s operations at a landfill in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania. Devlin, the firm’s head of litigation, enjoys another year as one of Benchmark’s Top 250 Women in Litigation. Another former future star who is elevated in this edition, Justin Danilewitz was selected as counsel to the Court-appointed monitor in the District of Delaware Bankruptcy Court proceeding involving pharmaceutical entity Mallinckrodt. As part of Mallinckrodt’s bankruptcy and settlement with a broad coalition of state Attorneys General, the Bankruptcy Court entered an operating injunction, which requires the appointment of the monitor to oversee Mallinckrodt’s opioid compliance program and its compliance with the operating injunction more generally.
     Based in the Minneapolis office, Katie Barrett-Wiik is addressed as “a very talented appellate lawyer,” by a peer, who goes on to elaborate, “She is my primary contact with the firm.  I refer appellate matters to her when appropriate. [She provides] responsive, skilled advocacy and client care. She is smart, skilled, dedicated and passionate about representing her clients; she is very well known and highly regarded in the local legal and judicial community.” Hilda Piloto, based in the firm’s West Palm Beach office, is championed as “an excellent technical and practical litigator,” by a peer, who goes on to testify, “I encountered her as we represented adverse clients in a very hotly contested litigation.  She had a very difficult client but managed both that client's temperament and expectations very well.”