An Abrams & Bayliss team had better luck last week in a return trip to Delaware Supreme Court than three years ago, when the court knocked out a $689 million damages award the firm won in a breach-of-contract case over the $1.5 billion take-private deal for Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP. Last week, after Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster dismissed the remaining claims in the case on remand, the Supreme Court revived the tortious interference claim the firm brought on behalf of the pipeline’s minority unitholders. The court’s majority remanded the case for further proceedings after holding the pipeline’s general partner breached the underlying partnership agreement by relying on an opinion of counsel rendered in bad faith when exercising its rights to purchase units. The Abrams & Bayliss team includes Tom Bayliss, who handled arguments on both trips to the state’s high court, Eric Veres and Dan Paterno.
A Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher team led by Tom Dupree upheld their win for Churchill Downs Inc. from earlier this year blocking the state of Michigan’s efforts to shut down betting on out-of-state races via the company’s TwinSpires app. The Sixth Circuit this week upheld an injunction barring the state’s licensing requirement, finding it was likely preempted by the federal Interstate Horseracing Act. The team representing Churchill Downs includes Gibson partner Christine Demana and associates John Tienken, Abby Walters and Thomas Moore; in-house lawyers, including Churchill Downs GC Brad Blackwell and corporate counsels Brandon Kenney and Andrew Silver; and Michigan counsel Patrick Seyferth and Derek Linkous of Bush Seyferth and Jason Hanselman and Kyle Asher of Dykema Gossett.
An appellate team at King & Spalding helped DirecTV revive an antitrust lawsuit against broadcasters that own local affiliates for the “Big-4” networks—ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox—in certain geographic markets. In a 2-1 decision this week, a Second Circuit panel found DirecTV has standing to sue Nexstar Media Group, Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting related to claims the defendants conspired to charge DirecTV supracompetitive retransmission consent fees. The panel majority reversed a district court decision which had found DirecTV lacked standing since it didn’t pay supracompetitive prices demanded by the alleged price-fixing conspiracy. The King & Spalding team includes Olivier Antoine and Paul Mezzina, who argued the appeal.
A separate team at King & Spalding representing TikTok and litigators at Cooley representing Google and YouTube knocked out claims targeting the companies’ content moderation decisions. In a proposed class action filed in the wake videos appearing on the platforms featuring the “blackout challenge”—a trend that saw kids choking themselves until they passed out—U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose, Calif., dismissed the suit with prejudice this week. DeMarchi held the plaintiffs’ claims were largely barred under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment. The judge wrote it was “difficult to escape the conclusion” that the design alleged defect the plaintiffs targeted was “bound entirely to defendants’ content moderation decisions, including how closely the determinations of the automated reporting tools track human review decisions.” The King & Spalding team includes partners Geoffrey Drake, David Mattern and Bailey Langner and senior associate Rachel Yeung. The Cooley team representing Google and YouTube included partners Tiana Demas and Kyle Wong and associates Reece Trevor, Erik Lampmann-Shaver and Mariah Young.
A Kirkland & Ellis team led by Dan Donovan and Judson Brown helped Gilead Sciences’ subsidiary Immunomedics beat back claims from company founder David Goldenberg. Goldenberg claimed that Immunomedics, the developer of Trodelvy, a treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, owed him a billion dollars under the revenue-sharing provision of his former employment agreement, or alternatively 1.5% of Gilead’s aggregate net revenue across all businesses, or $365 million. But Delaware Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster this week sided with the company, finding that the Trodelvy business did not generate positive net income for any year covered under the agreement and that Goldenberg was “entitled to zero.” The team representing Immunomedics included Kirkland’s Leah Hamlin, Neil Joseph and Grace Brier, as well as David Teklits and Alexandra Cumings of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell and Gilead in-house lawyers Janet Kwuon, Shirley Cantin and Christina Wong.
A Latham & Watkins team led by Jamie Wine and Betsy Marks helped ModivCare Inc. win approval of the medical transportation company’s Chapter 11 plan, which included a $1.1 billion debt for equity swap. After a weeklong trial, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alfredo Pérez found the unsecured creditors committee, which had objected to the plan, lacked standing to challenge the validity of the lenders’ liens. The judge also found that ModivCare's valuation of its assets and projected revenue was reasonable, despite the UCC’s contention that the assets were undervalued. The Latham team representing the debtor included Ray Schrock, Keith Simon and George Klidonas. The Latham team worked in collaboration with Debbie Newman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, who represented an independent director who conducted an investigation of the estate’s potential causes of action, and Kristopher Hansen, Matthew Warren and Craig Stanfield of Paul Hastings, who represented an ad hoc lender group.
Last week, litigators at Quinn Emanuel and Keller Postman succeeded where others have previously failed by securing class certification in an antitrust case against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation. U.S. District Judge George Wu in Los Angeles granted the motion for class certification and appointed the firms co-lead counsel in a lawsuit seeking 15 years of damages tied to consumers’ purchases of more than 400 million tickets for concerts and events. The Quinn team is led by Adam Wolfson, Kevin Teruya and Will Sears and includes of counsel Jennifer English and associate Brantley Pepperman. The Keller Postman team includes Warren Postman and Jessica Beringer.
Late last year, Benjamin Nagin and Tacy Flint of Sidley Austin and David Paul, the co-head of litigation at financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, took home Litigator of the Week honors when they knocked out antitrust claims brought by former Cantor partners targeting the forfeiture-for-competition provisions in the firm’s partnership agreements. Those provisions allow Cantor to withhold distributions otherwise owed when former partners go on to compete in certain ways with the firm. This week, the Third Circuit upheld the team’s win below in a precedential opinion. The appellate panel found that the plaintiffs had failed to show any broader “anticompetitive” harm to the market beyond the dip in their own compensation.
Last year a Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom led by Jack DiCanio, Matthew Sloan, Emily Reitmeier landed Runners-Up honors after they knocked out criminal charges against Chinese semiconductor company Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. in a cornerstone case in the DOJ’s now-defunct “China Initiative.” The acquittal in the criminal trade secret and economic espionage case came after eight weeks of testimony spread over two years in a bench trial before U.S District Senior Judge Maxine Chesney. Chesney found that prosecutors did not prove the company misappropriated trade secrets from Micron Technology Inc., the largest DRAM chip maker in the U.S. Last week, after the Skadden lawyers argued that a private settlement agreement between Jinhua and Micron eliminated the government's grounds for civil relief, Chesney granted Jinhua’s motion for summary judgment on the remaining claims. The Skadden team included associate Samuel Clark-Clough.
Deal Summary
