John M. Scott

The Eighth Circuit has denied a mandamus petition from Agri Stats Inc. and major pork producers who are seeking a Minnesota federal judge's recusal in price-fixing litigation based on a law clerk's previous work on a related case. The appeals court issued a one-page order Friday denying the petition without explanation. The district court also issued an order Friday denying a motion seeking to stay the case pending a ruling on the mandamus petition. U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim said in the order denying the stay bid that the case has been pending for more than seven years and is now ready for trial. "Further delays would not only harm plaintiffs by again halting trial preparation but would be contrary to the public's interest in the prompt and efficient administration of justice," the order said. "The court considers that defendants are unlikely to succeed on the merits for the reasons set for in the court's opinion denying recusal and vacatur." Pork producers, including Clemens Food Group, Seaboard Foods, Smithfield Foods, Triumph Foods and Tyson Foods Inc., are facing claims from separate groups of buyers accusing them of illegally sharing production and pricing information through the data analytics firm Agri Stats in order to suppress production and artificially inflate prices. The companies brought their motion for recusal in April, claiming that Judge Tunheim's clerk previously worked for firms representing one of the plaintiff classes and has a standing offer to join another firm that has targeted "Big Agriculture." Their filing also said the clerk "publicly embraced plaintiffs' attorneys in this case in the courtroom" immediately after a hearing. In addition to seeking the judge's recusal, the motion also sought to reverse the court's 232-page summary judgment ruling that largely denied the companies' bid to end the claims ahead of trial. Judge Tunheim rejected the recusal motion in October, saying the defendants had "fabricated an appearance of impropriety" where there was none and calling the clerk "one of more than a half-dozen" law clerks who have worked on the matter. The judge said the clerk never actually worked on the case during his summer internships with the plaintiffs' firms, while questioning the timing of the motion, saying it had the appearance of being more "tactical than sincere." Agri Stats and several producers then lodged a mandamus petition asking the Eighth Circuit to reverse the recusal and summary judgment decisions, which the appeals court denied on Friday. A trial is scheduled to start in the case on May 4. Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. The consumer indirect purchasers are represented by Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Steve W. Berman, Breanna Van Engelen, Elaine T. Byszewski and Abigail D. Pershing of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP and Daniel E. Gustafson, Daniel C. Hedlund, Michelle J. Looby and Joshua J. Rissman of Gustafson Gluek PLLC. The institutional indirect purchasers are represented by Shawn M. Raiter of Larson & King LLP and Michael J. Flannery of Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca LLP. The direct purchaser plaintiffs are represented by Brian D. Clark, W. Joseph Bruckner and Joseph C. Bourne of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP and Bobby Pouya, Michael H. Pearson, Clifford H. Pearson, Daniel L. Warshaw and Melissa S. Weiner of Pearson Warshaw LLP. Agri Stats is represented by Justin W. Bernick and William L. Monts III of Hogan Lovells. Clemens Food Group is represented by Daniel Laytin, Christa Cottrell, Jenna Stupar, Nicholas M. Ruge and Amarto Bhattacharyya of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. Seaboard Foods is represented by Peter J. Schwingler, Kelly Holt Rodriguez and Tess L. Erickson of Jones Day and William L. Greene, William D. Thomson and J. Nicci Warr of Stinson LLP. Smithfield Foods is represented by Brian Robinson of Brown Fox PLLC, John A. Cotter and John A. Kvinge of Larkin Hoffman Daly & Lindgren Ltd., Richard Parker of Milbank LLP and Josh Lipton of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Triumph Foods is represented by Michael T. Raupp, Christopher A. Smith, Jason Husgen, A. James Spung and Daniel G. Solomon of Husch Blackwell LLP. Tyson Foods is represented by Mary Helen Wimberly, Tiffany Rider, Lindsey Strang Aberg, Denise L. Plunkett and Jarod Taylor of Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP and Scott M. Rusert and A. Christopher Brown of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP. The case is In re: Pork Antitrust Litigation, case number 0:18-cv-01776, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. The mandamus petition is In re: Agri Stats Inc. et al., case number 25-3091, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Nov 24

4 min

A former naval engineer accusing shipbuilders of conspiring to suppress industry wages has told the U.S. Supreme Court that their petition for review of a Fourth Circuit decision reviving her proposed class action rests on a rule the panel never adopted. Susan Scharpf said in a brief Friday that although General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls and other shipbuilders argued the panel adopted a rule under which Scharpf's mere claim that their alleged no-poach deal is unwritten is enough to establish fraudulent concealment and delay the statute of limitations, the Fourth Circuit didn't do so. "Instead, it applied a factbound, consensus standard under which: (a) affirmative acts to cover up an antitrust conspiracy can be sufficient to allege fraudulent concealment; and (b) a wide range of conduct can be evidence of an affirmative cover up, including efforts to conceal evidence and avoid a paper trail," Scharpf said. That's the same rule applied by other circuit courts the shipbuilders asserted the Fourth Circuit split from, Scharpf said. Moreover, the panel also expressly rejected the rule the shipbuilders said it adopted, Scharpf stated, adding that the panel held that even if a plaintiff adequately claims there was an unwritten agreement they must also allege facts sufficient to infer that the defendants intended to prevent others from uncovering their scheme. "This is plain from the face of the opinion," Scharpf said, explaining that the panel wrote the shipbuilders affirmatively acted to cover up their conspiracy by avoiding putting anything in writing and using coded language, as well as enforced their conspiracy through private phone calls between high-level executives and unofficial retribution. "Because the petition's arguments about a circuit split, importance, and the merits all rest on a supposed rule that the court below never adopted — and because those arguments are wrong on their own terms in any event — the petition for a writ of certiorari should be denied," Scharpf said. The case stems from a proposed class action by former naval engineers and architects, Scharpf and Anthony D'Armiento, who accuse General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls and 18 other companies of suppressing industry wages by illegally scheming for decades to not actively recruit, or poach, each other's employees. The suit, filed in Virginia federal court in 2023, aims to represent a class of people employed by the companies as naval architects, marine engineers, or both, from Jan. 1, 2000. Although a Virginia federal judge found their claims fell outside the four-year statute of limitations and dismissed the suit in April 2024, a split Fourth Circuit panel reversed that decision in May. The majority held that Scharpf and D'Armiento had adequately pled they were kept in the dark about the alleged conspiracy within the statutory period because the employers were deliberately trying to conceal it. D'Armiento has since withdrawn as a plaintiff from the case. The shipbuilders filed their petition before the Supreme Court in September, arguing the Fourth Circuit panel's decision conflicts with prior rulings by the Fifth, Sixth and Ninth circuits, which have explained that mere silence or unwillingness to admit wrongful activities is insufficient to establish fraudulent concealment. They also said the decision flouts the statute of limitations period Congress contemplated. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Shipbuilders Council of America filed amicus briefs in October in support of the shipbuilders' petition. Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. The shipbuilders are represented by Donald B. Verrilli Jr. and Ginger D. Anders of Munger Tolles & Olson LLP, Matthew S. Hellman, Douglas E. Litvack, Elizabeth B. Deutsch, Michael A. Doornweerd and Gabriel K. Gillett of Jenner & Block LLP, Adam Block Schwartz, Todd Stenerson and Joseph P. Samuels of Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Sima Namiri-Kalantari and Chahira Solh of Crowell & Moring LLP, David G. Barger of Greenberg Traurig LLP, Attison L. Barnes III, Krystal B. Swendsboe, Scott M. McCaleb and Jon W. Burd of Wiley Rein LLP, Brian A. Hill and Brian J. Whittaker of Nixon Peabody LLP, Benjamin L. Hatch, Casey E. Lucier, J. Brent Justus, Nicholas J. Giles, Joshua D. Wade and W. Cole Geddy of McGuireWoods LLP, Allison W. Reimann, Sean O'D. Bosack and Christie B. Carrino of Godfrey & Kahn SC, Christopher C. Brewer, Ryan P. Phair, Michael F. Murray and Craig Y. Lee of Paul Hastings LLP, Perry A. Lange, Jennifer Milici and John W. O'Toole of WilmerHale, William DeVinney of William DeVinney PLLC, Matthew J. MacLean and Alvin Dunn of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, and William E. Lawler III and Amanda C. DeLaPerriere of Blank Rome LLP. The proposed class is represented by Brent W. Johnson, Steven J. Toll, Robert W. Cobbs, Alison S. Deich, Zachary R. Glubiak, Sabrina S. Merold and Callie C. Bruzzone of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Deepak Gupta and Thomas Scott-Railton of Gupta Wessler LLP, Shana E. Scarlett, Rio S. Pierce, Steve W. Berman, Kevin K. Green and Elaine T. Byszewski of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, George F. Farah, Nicholas J. Jackson and Simon A. Wiener of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Candice J. Enders and Julia R. McGrath of Berger Montague, and Brian D. Clark, Stephen J. Teti, Arielle S. Wagner and Eura Chang of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. The case is General Dynamics Corp. et al. v. Susan Scharpf et al., case number 25-293, in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Nov 24

4 min

The former administrator of Norfolk Southern's $600 million settlement over the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, said it had been following a federal court's plan of distribution, not defying it, when it paid personal injury claimants based on a starting amount of $25,000 each. Kroll Settlement Administration said the plaintiffs' lawyers on the case had been the ones pushing for personal injury claims to start at a base payout of $25,000, adjusted upward or downward by "points" based on each claimant's circumstances. So those lawyers could not seek to hold Kroll in contempt for not calculating the value of points based on each claimant's "pro rata" share of the overall settlement, the administrator said in a brief opposing a contempt finding Monday. "At every turn — in the agreement and the plan's plain language, in written and verbal statements to this court, and at a videotaped meeting with class members — class counsel promised that a formula starting with a $25,000 base case would determine personal injury payments," Kroll's brief said. "They never hinted that any sort of proportional or pro rata comparison of class members would play any role in reducing that base amount. They might wish now that they had put that system into place, but they did not, and they cannot blame KSA." Kroll is seeking to avoid a finding that it was in contempt of the Ohio federal court's orders for distributing the settlement proceeds, for which the plaintiffs are now asking the former administrator to pay back nearly $10 million in fees. Norfolk Southern had inked a $600 million settlement with the residents and businesses of East Palestine over the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment, which set off fires and chemical spills in the town along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Under the plan of distribution, claims would be allocated based on "points" that are added or subtracted according to factors such as how close the claimant was to the site of the derailment, how long they were allegedly exposed to chemicals, or how persistent their symptoms were. Kroll Settlement Administration had been brought in to oversee the claims, but allegations of payment delays and miscalculations led the plaintiffs' lead counsel to get Kroll kicked out and replaced with Epiq Class Action & Claims Services Inc. in June. Though the court had initially ordered an independent audit before moving ahead with the plaintiffs' bid to hold Kroll in contempt of the court's orders, U.S. District Judge Benita Pearson agreed to allow them to seek a "first step" motion for contempt, then follow up after the audit for any additional damages. The plaintiffs' counsel claimed in their motion Oct. 23 that Kroll had ended up overshooting the settlement amount allocated for personal injury claims by $17 million, in part because the administrator hadn't calculated all the claimants' points or determined how much of the total settlement each point was worth. But in its response Monday, Kroll said it had been following the stated plan all along when it started each claimant with a base of $25,000, then added or subtracted value based on the points specific only to that claimant, rather than accounting for the total number of claims. Kroll said the language of the distribution plan had only mentioned "pro rata" shares for claims of business losses or direct payments to households, which would only be calculated and paid after all the personal injury claims. No such "pro rata" language appeared in the section of the distribution plan dealing with the personal injury claimants, Kroll said. Kroll claimed the "base value" of personal injury claims had been lower earlier in the settlement process, at $10,000 each, but not enough people had signed up for them. Norfolk Southern wanted as many eligible claimants as possible to file for personal injuries because those payouts came with a release of all future claims against the railroad; the plaintiffs' counsel wanted more because if they didn't get enough, Norfolk Southern could walk away from the deal — along with the lawyers' $162 million fee award, Kroll said. So the plaintiffs' counsel revised the starting point upward, including one attorney announcing the change at a town hall meeting, and got thousands more claimants to sign up, the brief says. "No one at the town hall told class members that rather than receive a base of $25,000 per person, claimants would receive only a pro rata or relative share of some limited fund that class counsel set aside. In fact, the partner continued, 'As more people participate and we get firmer data about those numbers, these payment values could potentially rise as well,'" Kroll's brief says. "If claimants were indeed going to receive a pro rata or proportional share of a limited fund, more claimants could never raise the payments." The result was more than 30,000 people applied for personal injury claims, eventually blowing through the anticipated $130 million set aside for injury settlements, Kroll said. Instead of waiting for all the claims to roll in and be finalized, the parties had pushed Kroll to start getting payments out right away — further indicating their intention to start with a base payment and revise it for each claimant, rather than splitting the fund up once all the claimants were known, the administrator said. Other parts of the distribution plan supported that interpretation, Kroll said, including plans for any leftover funds from the personal injury settlements to carry over to the direct payments or business loss settlements. If the personal injury fund were distributed pro rata, there would be nothing left and the language about spillover funds would be extraneous, Kroll argued. The administrator said it had only been following the court's orders as it had seen them and was not intentionally disobeying them in a manner that would support a finding of contempt. Errors that the company had made in calculating the value of some claims — for example, giving the point value for a resident of the town of East Palestine to some residents of the wider ZIP code — had been caught and corrected by Kroll, which paid the difference back into the settlement fund, the brief says, and could not be held against the company for purposes of contempt. Kroll said it should not be made to repay nearly $10 million in fees because some of that had been used to pay the actual expenses of administering the settlement, like paying for notifications and setting up offices where people could file claims. At most, Kroll said, it might be on the hook for about $3.25 million it spent on calculating the value of claims, if Epiq had to completely redo that work. "If there are additional costs from Epiq getting up to speed and performing recalculations, class counsel should ask KSA for compensation for the fund for those amounts, not disgorgement of every dollar KSA received," the brief says. Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The plaintiffs are represented by Jayne Conroy of Simmons Hanly Conroy LLP, Elizabeth Graham of Grant & Eisenhofer PA and Seth Katz of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine PC. Kroll Settlement Administration is represented by Christopher J. Joyce of Flannery Georgalis LLC and Scott M. Ahmad, Stephen V. D'Amore, Scott P. Glauberman and Rachael E. Thompson of Winston & Strawn LLP. The case is In re: East Palestine Train Derailment, case number 4:23-cv-00242, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Nov 25

6 min

Counsel for Hytera Communications Corp. urged an Illinois federal judge Monday to reject prosecutors' request that it pay more than $290 million in restitution to Motorola Solutions Inc. for conspiring to steal its trade secrets, arguing during the first day of a two-day sentencing hearing that Motorola will be made whole by the more than $600 million Hytera must fork over in a parallel civil case. U.S. District Judge John Tharp heard nearly seven hours of argument Monday as to what fines and restitution he should impose after Hytera pled guilty in January to one criminal count of conspiracy to steal trade secrets from Motorola relating to its digital mobile radios. But he warned the parties he wasn't likely to rule after the proceedings continued on Tuesday. "I'm disappointed to say that, but there's an abundance of material here I want to give due consideration to," the judge said. "I've done that with respect to the briefs that have been filed, but this has been very useful and informative, and I want to go back to my notes and that's going to take a bit of time." Attorneys for Hytera told Judge Tharp that he should order the Chinese company to continue paying off a steep civil judgment, levy no more than $5 million in fines, and decline to order any additional restitution on top of that. "If you look at the civil case, there is no question that Motorola will receive hundreds of millions of dollars more than it lost," said Chris Niewoehner of Steptoe LLP. In the 2021 indictment, prosecutors accused Hytera of hiring engineers from Chicago-based Motorola from 2007 to 2020 and then directing them to swipe confidential information from Motorola before leaving. Hytera used those trade secrets to develop, manufacture and sell a two-way radio similar to one Motorola already had on the market, the indictment alleged. Motorola had sued Hytera four years earlier over the same alleged theft, and a jury in 2020 awarded Motorola $764 million. A post-trial ruling and a Seventh Circuit review has since chipped away at the total award. Rachel Cannon, also of Steptoe, said Monday that Hytera has already paid more than $180 million to Motorola and will end up paying a total of more than $600 million in the civil case, including damages, interest, attorney fees and costs, and product royalties, far more than the $173 million in profits Motorola has lost. She also argued that Motorola is not entitled to all the restitution prosecutors are seeking, saying the government is improperly relying on figures and statements out of the civil trial to back their motions at criminal sentencing. They also don't have the evidence to back their argument that the court should order more than the statutory maximum fine of $5 million under the federal law governing theft of trade secrets, Cannon said. "Hytera today has a world-class compliance program that neither probation nor the government seek to adjust," she said. "Bottom line, Hytera today is a vastly different company than it was in 2008, when the events in question occurred." Prosecutors, however, pointed to contentious proceedings in the civil case, which at one point last year included $1 million daily sanctions against Hytera, arguing the company has only paid a fraction of what it owes and has a history of failing to pay civil judgments. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Peabody said Hytera is still talking about not paying Motorola in full until five years from now, on a civil judgment entered years ago, with a final ruling from the Seventh Circuit on the matter more than a year ago. "It's just not right, judge," he said. Prosecutors also insisted the judge shouldn't agree with Hytera and the probation officer that a complexity exception in the federal sentencing guidelines should apply, which provides that if a calculation of pecuniary gain or loss would "unduly complicate or prolong the sentencing process," it shouldn't be used to determine the base fine. There is no such complexity to this "corporate smash and grab," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Melody Wells. "There is nothing complicated about this crime, Your Honor. Hytera did what people and organizations have done forever," Wells said. "It lied, it cheated, and it stole in order to get ahead. That's as straightforward as it gets." Hytera's chairman and founder, Chen Qingzhou, wanted the digital mobile radios developed on his timeline and had a "let them sue us" mentality, she went on. At bare minimum, he tolerated the theft or was willfully ignorant, but there's evidence he was aware of it, Wells said. "By and large that strategy has worked," she said, adding that Motorola still hasn't received what it's due for Hytera taking a "deliberate shortcut." "Hytera made tons of money. It is a profitable company. It is a successful company. And it has yet to build a radio that isn't based on the ingenuity of Motorola's," Wells said. A fine of $60 million is warranted, Wells said, and not imposing a fine of at least that amount would send the wrong message not just to Hytera but to other would-be corporate defendants. Motorola's general counsel, James Niewiara, also made a brief statement to the court, asking it to hold Hytera accountable for "cheating twice over," first in stealing from an American company and then competing against it based on that theft. Motorola invested $3.5 billion in a short period to develop the relevant technology, but "Hytera simply stole its way into the market," he said, a "direct affront" to hundreds of engineers, many based in Chicago, who spent tens of thousands of hours developing it. The civil case is not enough to hold Hytera accountable, Niewiara added, citing the drain of his company resources in dealing with Hytera's litigation and tactics, including "unceasing efforts to postpone payment." "This has never been a routine commercial dispute," he said. Prosecutors' recommendation of nearly $290.8 million in restitution includes an estimated $174.4 million in profits that Motorola lost between 2010 and 2019, a period starting with Hytera's launch of its first mobile radio product, according to testimony in the civil case. The restitution amount also includes about $114.2 million in prejudgment interest and almost $2.2 million in attorney fees for Motorola's participation in the criminal case. Only one of seven individual defendants, Gee Siong Kok, made an appearance in the criminal matter. The remaining defendants are listed as fugitives in the court's docket. Kok pled guilty in December 2022 to conspiracy to steal trade secrets. Last month, attorneys for Motorola in the civil case asked a Chicago federal judge to order Hytera to pay the $371.7 million it still owes from that judgment, accusing Hytera of delaying its financial obligations. The government is represented by Melody Wells, Sean K. Driscoll, Steven J. Dollear, Thomas P. Peabody, Wesley A. Morrissette and Vikas Kumar Didwania of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois. Hytera is represented by Rachel M. Cannon, Christopher S. Niewoehner, Boyd T. Cloern, Scott M. Richey and James L. Brochin of Steptoe LLP. The case is U.S. v. Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd., case number 1:20-cr-00688, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Nov 24

5 min

A Virginia federal court has refused to toss a proposed class action accusing some of the country's biggest warship-makers and naval engineering consultants of participating in an illegal conspiracy to suppress wages after the Fourth Circuit revived the case earlier this year. U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga issued an order Wednesday denying the remaining arguments for dismissal from the shipbuilders and consultants, which include General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls Industries and CACI. Judge Trenga initially tossed the antitrust claims on statute of limitations grounds, but a split Fourth Circuit panel revived the case in May. The judge said in Wednesday's order that while the companies contend they have independent reasons for not poaching naval engineers from each other, the proposed class is offering anonymous witness statements about an alleged "gentleman's agreement," along with allegations about the "incestuous" nature of the industry. "These arguments are substantial, but at the motion to dismiss stage this court is not permitted to 'weigh[] the competing inferences that can be drawn from the complaint,' and when considered in light of all the allegations in the complaint ... plaintiff has plausibly alleged sufficient 'plus' factors," the order said. The judge said the engineers are offering statements from multiple witnesses about the companies not recruiting naval engineers from each other and said the witnesses either name each company as part of the conspiracy or discuss their policy of not recruiting workers from competitors. The order said that without more, the alleged conspiracy could still amount to "conscious parallelism," especially since the alleged gentleman's agreement did not bar the companies from hiring a competitors' engineer who approached them unsolicited. The companies also argued that they can explain their parallel hiring practices, since they often work together on government projects. But the judge said the claims can move ahead because the engineers are alleging that the "incestuous" nature of the "small, close-knit, geographically concentrated industry" makes the conspiracy more likely. The judge pointed to allegations in the complaint that executives from the companies frequently interact and that specialized education, training, security clearance and citizenship requirements make the pool of naval engineers small and the cost of their replacement high. The judge declined to determine what legal standard should apply to the claims at this stage. The order said there are too many factual issues surrounding the alleged gentleman's agreement to conclude whether it would be considered a per se violation or whether it would need to be analyzed under a full rule-of-reason analysis to weigh its potential benefits against any harm. The order also rejected several individual dismissal bids from the shipmakers and consultants, who argued that even if a conspiracy was adequately alleged, their own participation was not established. The judge accepted contentions that Thor Solutions, Marinette Marine, Bollinger, and Tridentis were allegedly tied to conspiracy directly based on witness testimony, which the order said the Fourth Circuit found strengthened the plausibility of the claims. The judge rejected arguments from Serco, CACI and General Dynamics based on changes in ownership and the amount of control the parent companies exerted over subsidiaries. Naval engineer Susan Scharpf filed the proposed class action in 2023 in the Eastern District of Virginia, looking to represent naval architects and marine engineers who worked for the shipbuilding companies between Jan. 1, 2000, and the present. In addition to several shipbuilding companies, the lawsuit also names a number of engineering consultants including Gibbs & Cox, Serco. Faststream Recruitment was named in the suit as well but has since settled and agreed to cooperate with the proposed class. Judge Trenga initially dismissed the lawsuit in April 2024, finding that the claims fell outside the four-year statute of limitations because the alleged gentleman's agreement was supposed to have dated back to 2000. A split Fourth Circuit panel revived the case just over a year later, ruling that the engineers had sufficiently pled that the companies deliberately kept them and others in the dark regarding the agreement. The shipbuilders still have a pending petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision. Representatives for the engineers and for Huntington Ingalls Industries declined to comment Monday. Representatives for the other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs are represented by Brent W. Johnson, Zachary R. Glubiak, Steven J. Toll, Robert W. Cobbs, Alison S. Deich and Sabrina S. Merold of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, Shana E. Scarlett, Steve W. Berman and Elaine T. Byszewski of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, George F. Farah, Rebecca P. Chang, Nicholas Jackson and Simon Wiener of Handley Farah & Anderson PLLC, Candice J. Enders and Julia R. McGrath of Berger Montague and Brian D. Clark, Arielle S. Wagner and Stephen J. Teti of Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP. Bath Iron Works Corp., Electric Boat Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and General Dynamics Information Technology Inc. are represented by David G. Barger of Greenberg Traurig LLP and Douglas E. Litvack, Matthew S. Hellman and Michael A. Doornweerd of Jenner & Block LLP. Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., HII Fleet Support Group LLC, HII Mission Technologies Corp., Ingalls Shipbuilding Inc. and Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. are represented by Adam Block Schwartz, Todd Stenerson and David Higbee of Allen Overy Shearman Sterling and Robbie Rogart Jost and Sima Namiri-Kalantari of Crowell & Moring LLP. Bollinger Shipyards LLC is represented by Attison L. Barnes III, Scott M. McCaleb, Jon W. Burd, Daniel T. Park and Krystal B. Swendsboe of Wiley Rein LLP. Gibbs & Cox Inc. is represented by Perry Lange, Jennifer Milici and John W. O'Toole of WilmerHale. CACI International is represented by Christopher C. Brewer, Ryan P. Phair, Michael F. Murray and Craig Y. Lee of Paul Hastings LLP. Marinette Marine Corp. is represented by John F. Terzaken III and Abram J. Ellis of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and Allison W. Reimann, Sean O'D. Bosack and Christie B. Carrino of Godfrey & Kahn SC. Serco Inc. is represented by J. Brent Justus, Nicholas J. Giles, Joshua D. Wade, W. Cole Geddy, Benjamin L. Hatch and Casey Erin Lucier of McGuireWoods LLP. The Columbia Group Inc. is represented by William T. DeVinney of Briglia Hundley PC. Thor Solutions LLC is represented by Matthew J. MacLean and Alvin Dunn of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. Tridentis LLC is represented by William Lawler and Amanda DeLaPerriere of Blank Rome LLP. The case is Susan Scharpf et al. v. General Dynamics Corp. et al., case number 1:23-cv-01372, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Dec 1

5 min