Amanda Bonn is a partner with Susman Godfrey and a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. Bonn handles some of the most groundbreaking and newsworthy litigation in California and across the country. Between 2020 and 2022 she was recognized as one of 100 Top Women Lawyers in California by The Daily Journal, an “Up and Coming” Commercial Litigator in California by Chambers and Partners, a Litigation Trailblazer by the National Law Journal (ALM), and among the 500 Leading Litigators and 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers nationwide by Lawdragon.
Bonn’s unique ability to master diverse subject matters has allowed her to successfully represent both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of practice areas including antitrust, appellate, class action, employment, intellectual property, privacy, qui tam, and securities litigation. Bonn’s versatility is evident in her wide-ranging practice in cases with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars at stake.
Cutting-Edge Cases
Bonn takes on formidable opponents in cases that are shaping the future of business and industry. For example, she serves as co-lead counsel in two groundbreaking putative class actions challenging Google’s unlawful collection of consumers’ Internet browsing and app activity.
In the first case—which challenges Google’s collection of private Internet browsing data even when users are in “Incognito” mode—Bonn recently received nationwide press for her oral argument opposing Google’s motion to dismiss. Following Bonn’s successful argument, the Court rejected Google’s motion in its entirety, allowing this pioneering case to proceed.
The second case challenges Google’s collection of users’ “Web & App Activity,” even after users expressly denied Google permission to do so. Once again, Bonn successfully argued against Google’s motion to dismiss the case – resulting in a Court order keeping the plaintiffs’ claims alive.
While Bonn frequently represents plaintiffs, she is equally adept at defending parties on the other side of the “v.” Before the same Court in which she represents plaintiffs with privacy claims, Bonn simultaneously leads the defense of the world’s leading commodity trading firm, Vitol Inc., in an antitrust case alleging a conspiracy to inflate California gasoline prices over a two-year period.
In another newsworthy matter, Bonn was tapped to defend Flutter Entertainment in a multi-billion-dollar dispute with Fox Sports concerning an option to purchase a stake in the leading U.S. sports betting firm FanDuel Group.
Recent Successes
Whether positioning a case for pre-trial settlement, trying a case before a jury, or arguing an appeal, Bonn has secured landmark rulings and victories in equally diverse and complex practice areas.
In FSG Services LLC v. Flutter Entertainment PLC, Bonn secured a favorable award for Flutter Entertainment when an arbitrator in New York nearly doubled the exercise price its opponent, FOX Corporation, sought for its option to acquire 18.6% of Flutter’s portfolio company, FanDuel Group. This high stakes, high profile arbitration resulted from FOX’s assertion that it should be entitled to the same price Flutter paid for its share of FanDuel two years before the arbitration took place – $2.1 billion, with an implied company valuation of $11.2 billion. The arbitrator, however, found that FOX’s payment must be based on a substantially higher FanDuel valuation of $20 billion it was hoping for, plus an additional 5% interest per year. At the time of the decision, this equated to a valuation for FanDuel of $22 billion and an option exercise price of $4.1 billion for FOX — nearly twice the amount that FOX argued it should be required to pay. The arbitrator also rejected FOX’s claim that Flutter had not provided commercially reasonable resources to the Fox Bet business.
As co-lead counsel to plaintiffs in State of California et al. v. Cellco Partnership DBA Verizon Wireless et al—a whistleblower case accusing the major wireless carriers of fraudulently overbilling the government—Bonn supervised a wide-ranging, multi-year effort to hold some of the nation’s most powerful companies accountable. After years of tenacious litigation, Bonn’s team secured settlements worth a combined $175 million against AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint on behalf of hundreds of California and Nevada government entities. These settlements are believed to be the largest of their kind in California.
Bonn was tapped to serve as co-lead trial counsel defending a KBR subsidiary in a trade secret case seeking over $20 million, replacing prior counsel three years into the case and on the eve of trial. Bonn delivered the opening statement, cross-examined the plaintiff’s technical expert, and cross-examined the plaintiff’s CEO and Chairman of the Board. The jury returned a complete defense verdict on the trade secret claim and the Court ultimately awarded damages of just $68,000 on ancillary claims. Read Bonn’s lethal cross-examination of the plaintiff’s technical expert here.
NBCUniversal hired Bonn to turn things around after its subsidiary, Universal Cable Productions, lost a major insurance dispute with Atlantic Specialty Insurance Co. As lead appellate counsel, Bonn turned a total loss into a complete victory, obtaining a widely-covered and precedent-setting insurance win at the Ninth Circuit.
As co-lead trial counsel, Bonn continued racking up victories in the district court upon remand, securing a rare plaintiff-side summary judgment on liability, and positioning the case for a trial solely on the issues of damages and whether the insurance company acted in bad faith. The night before trial in which Bonn was slated to deliver closing arguments, the case settled on confidential terms.
Updated Aug 2023
