Anne Champion

Anne M. Champion is a partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She is a member of Gibson Dunn’s Transnational Litigation, Environmental Litigation, Media Law, and Intellectual Property Practice Groups.

Anne has played a lead role in a wide range of high-stakes litigation matters, including trials. Her practice focuses on complex international disputes, including RICO, fraud, and tort claims, and includes federal and state court litigation and international arbitration. She also has significant experience in First Amendment and intellectual property disputes, and an active pro bono docket.

Anne was recognized by Lawdragon as one of the 2024-2025 “500 Leading Litigators in America,” and one of the 2023 "500 Leading Global Litigators." She is ranked by Chambers USA for General Commercial Litigation, was recently recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a “Litigation Star,” and she was named to its 2024 list of the “Top 250 Women in Litigation.” Anne was also recognized by The Legal 500 US as a “Leading Lawyer” in the area of international litigation in 2024, and by Who’s Who Legal in its 2024 and 2022 Environment & Climate Change Guide. She has twice been named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer. On July 17, 2020, she received recognition along with Ted Boutrous and Matthew McGill for defeating an attempt to block the publication of Mary Trump’s now-best seller Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. She previously received the award on September 27, 2019 for the successful defeat of a petition to confirm an $18 billion sham Egyptian arbitration award against Chevron Corporation and Chevron USA, Inc. Anne and her efforts to resolve the cold case murder of a childhood friend are featured on the podcast Bonaparte from Imperative Entertainment.

Recent highlights include

• Representing CNN and White House correspondent Jim Acosta in their successful suit to reinstate Mr. Acosta’s White House press credentials. After the district court entered a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump Administration immediately to restore Mr. Acosta’s White House press credentials days after Plaintiffs filed suit, the parties resolved their dispute.
• Representing White House correspondent Brian Karem in his suit to reinstate his White House press credentials. After the district court granted Mr. Karem’s motion for a preliminary injunction to reinstate his credentials, the Government appealed, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed decision in Mr. Karem’s favor, Karem v. Trump, 960 F.3d 656 (D.C. Cir. 2020).
• Representing shareholders of Devas Multimedia in proceedings to enforce arbitral awards and judgments against India and its state-owned enterprise, Antrix Corporation.
• Representing a U.S. investor in an ICSID arbitration in an expropriation claim against the Republic of Colombia.
• Chevron Corporation: Representing Chevron Corporation and Chevron U.S.A., Inc., in defeating a petition to confirm a sham $18 billion Egyptian arbitral award in the Northern District of California, affirmed by the Ninth Circuit, Al-Qarqani v. Chevron Corporation, 8 F.4th 1018 (9th Cir. 2021). Following the Ninth Circuit’s affirmance, Chevron secured a compensatory sanction of over $250,000 in attorneys’ fees against Petitioners’ counsel for his submission of a fraudulent newspaper article before the Ninth Circuit.
• Chevron Corporation: Represented Chevron Corporation in its successful racketeering suit against Steven Donziger, a U.S. lawyer who masterminded a fraudulent scheme against the company involving environmental litigation in Ecuador. The trial victory resulted in an injunction barring enforcement of a $9 billion Ecuadorian judgment in any U.S. court. The court found that Donziger and his co-conspirators had procured the Ecuadorian judgment through bribery and fraud, and had in fact ghostwritten the Ecuadorian judgment, along with a key damages report submitted to the Ecuadorian court by a purportedly neutral special master. The trial court’s judgment was affirmed in full by the Second Circuit. Chevron Corp. v. Donziger, 974 F. Supp. 2d 362 (S.D.N.Y. 2014); aff’d Chevron Corp. v. Donziger, 833 F.3d 74 (2d Cir. 2016). Multiple foreign courts and an international arbitration tribunal have since agreed, based on the RICO trial evidence, that the Ecuadorian judgment is not enforceable.
• Dole Food Company, Inc.: Ms. Champion represented Dole Food Company in a wrongful death case brought by dozens of Colombian plaintiffs who alleged Dole had provided support for the Colombian paramilitary organization, the AUC. After years of litigation, and after Ms. Champion deposed a former paramilitary leader who testified that the Plaintiffs’ lawyers had attempted to bribe him to provide false testimony against Dole in the case, Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims with prejudice just months before trial.
• Representing Amazon in its successful defense of Marquez v. Amazon, a putative class action of Amazon Prime Customers alleging damages for purported breach of “Rapid Delivery” benefits in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ complaint for failure to state a claim, finding that Amazon had not violated any contractual duties to the plaintiffs by re-prioritizing for Rapid Delivery essential goods such as grocery and pharmaceuticals in the early days of the pandemic. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed in full, finding that Amazon had the right to limit or change Rapid Delivery benefits, and that this did not render Amazon’s contracts with Prime customers unconscionable.
• Citizens of Albany County: Ms. Champion was one of the lead partners on the trial team that prevailed in a Voting Rights Act trial against the County of Albany and the County of Albany Board of Elections. Pope v. County of Albany, 94 F. Supp. 3d 302 (N.D.N.Y. 2015). Following a multi-week trial, the district court held that the County had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by adopting a redistricting plan that failed to add a fifth majority-minority district to the County Legislature following the 2010 Census, diluting the strength of minority voters. As a result of the trial victory, the County Legislature was required to revise the districts to add a majority-minority district.

Anne earned her Bachelor of Science in physics with distinction from the University of Iowa and received the James A. Van Allen and the Myrtle K. Meier awards for excellence in physics. She earned her Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, from George Washington University School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Raymond F. Hossfeld Merit Scholarship. She served as an articles editor for The George Washington Law Review and published her case note, Another Brick in the Wall: United States v. Samuel and the Lower Courts’ Narrow Reading of Apprendi v. New Jersey Before Blakely v. Washington, 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1004 (2004). Upon graduation, she was awarded the Willard Waddington-Gatchell prize for academic excellence and the John F. Evans prize for outstanding achievement in the clinical law program, D.C. Law Students in Court, and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Following law school, Anne clerked for the Honorable Max Rosenn on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Anne is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Northern Districts of New York, the Eastern District of Texas, and the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and the Federal Circuit.

Anne is proficient in Spanish and Italian.

Capabilities

• Transnational Litigation
• Class Actions
• Energy and Infrastructure
• Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort
• Intellectual Property
• International Arbitration
• Judgment and Arbitral Award Enforcement
• Latin America
• Litigation
• Media, Entertainment, and Technology
• Oil and Gas
• Technology Litigation
• Trials

Credentials

Education:

• George Washington University - 2005 Juris Doctor
• City University of New York (CUNY) - 2002 Master of Arts
• University of Iowa - 1995 Bachelor of Science

Admissions:

• New York Bar

Clerkships:

• US Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit, Hon. Max Rosenn, 2005 - 2006