Gibson Dunn & Crutcher

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher is nationally recognized for its labor and employment litigation practice. Peers in the employment space comment on the firm’s presence, describing it as “well known nationally in employment” and “on the national stage.” In addition to its Los Angeles headquarters, the firm provides, as a peer notes, “very good lawyers”, in key hubs such as Washington DC and New York. Another peer notes the firm’s focus on significant cases saying, “I still see Gibson having really interesting matters.”  The group frequently represents industry-leading companies in novel cases that have the potential to set precedents in labor and employment law. The practice group is accustomed to defending multinational companies in such high-profile matters.

The co-chairs of the firm’s labor and employment practice group are Los Angeles-based Catherine Conway and DC-based Jason Schwartz. Conway handles high-stakes employment trials, especially in the wage and hour litigation area. Schwartz has served as lead partner on several successful matters for clients over the last year. Schwartz and DC partner Greta Williams represented Amazon in a high profile, novel class action alleging age discrimination for employment advertising, recruiting, and hiring that targets younger applicants through Facebook.

Former co-chair of the practice group, Eugene Scalia, hails from the DC office. In 2017, Scalia led Ford to victory in the sixth circuit, which affirmed a district court’s ruling of summary judgment in a case filed against the company for an ADA violation. A peer states, “Gene Scalia is really just a great lawyer.”

In regards to the firm’s talent, a peer says, “You don’t need to look any farther than Ted Boutrous.” Located in the Los Angeles office, Boutrous serves as co-chair of the litigation group and recently, along with California’s Michele Maryott and Theane Evangelis, successfully represented Grubhub in an important trial for similar companies in the “gig economy” dealing with independent contractor issues.

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher enjoys a nationwide status as one of litigation’s most dominant entities. While its origins lie in California, the firm has grown in size and stature to transcend any notion of greater importance in any particular jurisdiction, boasting a star-studded roster that encompasses virtually all of its offices. Peers offer accolades aplenty. “Gibson Dunn is ‘the place to be’ at the moment,” asserts one prominent practitioner at a competing firm, who goes on to confide, “They make all the rest of us jealous. They just seem to go from strength to strength in a fashion that is nothing short of remarkable. And some of their litigators, particularly their appellate team, have reached iconic status.” In a recent example owing to the “strength-to-strength” claim, the firm staged a considerable coup when it lured DC-based antitrust trial specialist Richard Parker to its bench from his longtime post at O’Melveny & Myers. “That is a big-time injection of steroids,” observes one antitrust peer, who goes on to quip, “as if Gibson Dunn needed it.”

One such appellate “icon,” Ted Boutrous, a Los Angeles practitioner who has spent his fair share of time in the Supreme Court, recently secured a 95% reduction of a staggering $454 million jury verdict against Kimberly-Clark and Halyard Health, who were sued by a class of surgical gown purchasers, who claimed fraud and unfair competition over the companies’ alleged failure to adequately disclose the extent to which their MicroCool surgical gowns met a particular industry standard, namely concerning the potential for the gowns to allow blood pathogens to pass through its fibers. Another appellate celebrity and frequent Supreme Court presence, DC’s Ted Olson represents several major gambling-related entities in challenges by all of the major professional sports leagues, all of which suggested that legalizing sports gambling in New Jersey would threaten the integrity of their games. In May 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the federal law prohibiting states from legalizing sports betting. In another Supreme Court win, Drew Tulumello, another DC practitioner with a keen acumen in appeals, triumphed for BNSF Railway in a case concerning allegations by two former BNSF employees that they sustained injuries while working for the railway. Rather than pursue relief in the states where they were injured, the employees filed suits in Montana state court, a forum known for its liberal construction of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. In May 2017, the US Supreme Court reversed the Montana Supreme Court’s plaintiff ruling by a vote of 8-1.

The firm’s intellectual property capacity is seeing a steady ascent in profile. Los Angeles’ Wayne Barsky secured a unanimous jury verdict in favor of Merck-Serono and Pfizer in a patent infringement suit concerning multiple sclerosis medicine. In February 2018, a jury rejected the plaintiff’s staggering claim of $5.4 billion in damages.

In the New York office, standout trial lawyer Randy Mastro remains a figurehead regarding the firm’s ongoing representation of Chevron in its successful RICO and fraud suit against the purveyors of a $9.2 billion Ecuadorian judgment against the company for alleged contamination of the Amazon Basin. Mastro was also lead counsel to Lynn Tilton and her investment firm Patriarch Partners in a high-profile three-week trial before the SEC, a six-day trial in Delaware Chancery Court, an ongoing civil RICO case in federal court in the Southern District of New York, and a number of related, ongoing matters. These matters stem from 2015 allegations that the client violated the antifraud provisions of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 in their operation of three collateralized loan obligation funds by reported misleading values for the assets as well as failure to disclose a conflict of interest arising from Tilton’s undisclosed approach to categorization of assets. “Randy is just on a tear that doesn’t seem likely to stop at any point in my lifetime,” muses a peer. Mastro’s team in these matters includes stars Larry Zweifach, Mark Kirsch, Caitlin Halligan and Reed Brodsky. Brodsky has also been at center stage in a hotly contested case for Partner Fund Management, an investor in the embattled, and ultimately bankrupt, Silicon Valley startup Theranos, which claimed to have revolutionized methods of blood testing, claims that would eventually prove fraudulent. Brodsky investigated, developed viable claims to pursue, and then filed the first lawsuit by an investor against Theranos, its CEO, and its former COO, seeking to recover the lost investment of nearly $100 million and treble damages. Another New York star with an interrupted streak of celebrity, Orin Snyder is representing Facebook and directors and officers in the thorny civil litigation arising out reports of the misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica. Snyder is defending the social media juggernaut in securities and consumer class actions, and shareholder derivative cases, arising out of the Cambridge Analytica matter filed in courts throughout the country. Living up to his reputation of a “titan of trials for trendy tech” even further, as of August 2018, Snyder has just been retained to represent seven executives of Tinder in a dispute against the dating app’s parent companies.

An all-star Gibson Dunn team won big in a May 2017 Ninth Circuit Affirmation of the dismissal of a multibillion-dollar damages in a False Claims Act claim against Aventis. The plaintiff alleged that Aventis had improperly secured a patent that allowed it to overcharge the government for a drug by at least $1 billion. The district court dismissed the case, the plaintiff appealed the dismissal, and Aventis cross-appealed. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal and ruled for Aventis, remanding the case to the district court. The district court subsequently ruled that the suit was frivolous. Lead partners on this case are DC appellate “guru” Mark Perry, as well as DC’s Stephen Payne, and two star practitioners from the Dallas office, Sean Royall and William Dawson.