Susman Godfrey Co-Managing Partner, Vineet Bhatia, is a seasoned, first-chair commercial trial lawyer with nearly 30 years of experience handling a wide variety of complicated, high-stakes disputes for plaintiffs and defendants. He has tried more than 25 cases to verdict or arbitration decision and has led dozens more that have resolved successfully for his clients before trial commenced.
Mr. Bhatia’s renowned trial experience in bet-the-company cases has repeatedly led clients to call him to take over cases shortly before trial. In those situations, clients need a lawyer with a proven track record of consistent trial wins to represent them in their high-stakes litigation. A quick learner, Mr. Bhatia is adept at breaking down complex factual and legal disputes succinctly and convincingly to judges and juries. This skill is invaluable when he comes into a case shortly before trial.
Mr. Bhatia has been hired to try lawsuits for numerous Fortune 500 companies, including ACE Limited, Genworth Financial, Great Plains Energy, KBR, LyondellBasell, Philip Morris, Walmart, and Westar Energy. He has also been hired by private equity firms and their portfolio companies, including Apollo and its portfolio company, Hexion Specialty Chemicals. Likewise, Bhatia has faced off against industry giants such as Bank of America, Tyco Healthcare Group, Genzyme Corporation, Wells Fargo, and Venezuela national oil company, PDVSA – and won.
In the widely followed FSG Services LLC. v. Flutter Entertainment, Mr. Bhatia served as lead counsel to Flutter Entertainment and secured a favorable award for the online gambling company when an arbitrator nearly doubled the multi-billion dollar exercise price its opponent, Fox Corporation, claimed it should pay for its option to acquire 18.6% of Flutter’s, FanDuel Group. This 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.
In addition to representing corporate clients, Mr. Bhatia often represents individuals either in mass actions or class actions and smaller companies in their disputes with larger corporate defendants.
Mr. Bhatia’s practice has spanned the country. He has handled lawsuits or arbitrations in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. His cases have involved antitrust, breach of contract, fraud, theft of trade secrets, patent infringement, insurance coverage, environmental contamination, product liability litigation, the federal false claims act, and many other types of cases. Mr. Bhatia has also handled numerous arbitrations arising out of corporate transactions, including disputes related to purchase price adjustments, contingent compensation, and tax sharing agreements. He has also handled arbitrations in London in multiple insurance coverage disputes.
Mr. Bhatia graduated from the Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and a Notes and Comments Editor on the Columbia Law Review. He started his career at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York City in 1991 and joined Susman Godfrey in 1996.
Updated Oct 2024