Global Trial

Representative high-profile trial achievements by Gibson Dunn lawyers in the past several years include:

• Secured a favorable resolution for the founders of Tinder, following a nearly four-week jury trial and days before the case was scheduled to go to the jury, when the defendants agreed to pay $441 million to settle one of the largest founders’ disputes to go to trial in the history of the tech industry. Since 2018, Gibson Dunn had represented the founders and early employees of the popular dating app, including cofounders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen, in New York state court (Commercial Division) against Tinder’s corporate parents Match Group and IAC. The lawsuit alleged that Match and IAC had breached contracts governing the Tinder employees’ stock option compensation. The Tinder plaintiffs alleged that Match and IAC had subverted the process to value their stock options by seizing control of Tinder, creating false financial information, suppressing true financial information, and threatening Tinder employees.
• Achieved a unanimous jury verdict for Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) after a three-week bench trial on contract interpretation and a five-week jury trial on breach and damages in the California Superior Court, which resulted in an award to HP of more than $3 billion against Oracle Corporation. This was one of the largest single-plaintiff jury verdicts in U.S. history, and the verdict, valued at more than $4.5 billion with post-judgment interest, was later affirmed by the California Court of Appeal. The affirmance marked the culmination of ten years of litigation following Oracle’s decision in 2011 to cease offering new versions of its software products to customers running HP’s high-end Itanium servers, which HP argued breached a contract between the parties. The Daily Journal named the jury verdict, the highest verdict in California for the year, as one of its Top Plaintiffs’ Verdicts by Dollar.
• Obtained a sweeping bench trial victory for AMC Network in a high-stakes lawsuit in the California Superior Court brought by executive producers on the hit television show “The Walking Dead.” The plaintiffs alleged that the network failed to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars under their “profit participation” contracts with AMC. The Court agreed with AMC, holding that the plaintiffs’ interpretation of their profit participation contracts was completely incorrect. The Hollywood Reporter remarked that AMC’s “huge” win has the potential “to impact Hollywood dealmaking” and shape profit participation negotiations throughout the industry. The case was named among the “Top 20 Defense Results” of 2020 by the Daily Journal.
• Twice secured the largest defense victory in a patent infringement suit in history for EMD Serono, Inc. (the biopharmaceutical business of Merck KGaA in the U.S. and Canada) and Pfizer Inc., first with a unanimous jury verdict in a five-week trial in the District of New Jersey and later in a unanimous Federal Circuit decision. Plaintiff Biogen sought more than $5.4 billion in damages – more than double the largest award in patent litigation history – for alleged infringement of its patent in connection with the marketing and sale of the multiple sclerosis medicine Rebif®. The Federal Circuit reinstated the jury’s verdict that the asserted claims of Biogen’s patent were invalid, thereby reversing the district court’s post-trial order that had granted Biogen judgment as a matter of law and a conditional new trial. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Biogen’s petition for certiorari, conclusively ending more than a decade of litigation. Gibson Dunn’s win was named a “Patent Impact Case of the Year” at the LMG Life Sciences Awards.
• Secured a complete trial victory for Fitbit in a high-profile, high-stakes patent case brought by Philips against Fitbit and Garmin in the International Trade Commission. The plaintiff had asserted patent claims against virtually all of Fitbit’s smartwatch and tracker products, and sought an exclusion order to stop Fitbit from importing or selling the products anywhere in the United States for the life of the patents. The ITC rejected these claims as invalid or not infringed, and rejected the plaintiff’s request to exclude Fitbit’s products from the United States. The Am Law Litigation Daily recognized the trial team with its “Litigator of the Week” award for its success.
• Won a high-profile defense jury verdict following a three-week trial for Textron Financial in the Northern District of Ohio, completely defeating a bankruptcy trustee’s billion-dollar fraudulent transfer claim. The plaintiff had alleged Textron’s involvement in a notorious “Ponzi scheme” fraud at an Ohio company, Fair Finance, whose executives bilked thousands of investors of their life savings and, as a result, went to jail for their crimes. The trustee appealed the verdict, arguing that the district court mistakenly rejected its arguments at summary judgment and erroneously instructed the jury at trial. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the trustee’s arguments, affirming the verdict in favor of Textron Financial and ending more than nine years of hard-fought litigation. For its victory, Gibson Dunn’s trial team received The Am Law Litigation Daily “Litigator of the Week” honor and were recognized as “Masters of the Courtroom” in The National Law Journal Winning Litigators report.
• Secured a landmark ruling on behalf of Deutsche Telekom, following a two-week trial in the Southern District of New York, which held that Deutsche Telekom’s entity’s $26.5 billion acquisition of Sprint Corporation did not violate Clayton Act §7, thereby clearing the way for the acquisition to proceed.
• Defeated challenges to Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation’s patent covering Gilenya®, its blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug with $2 billion in annual global sales, following a four-day bench trial in the District of Delaware. Generic drug makers had challenged the patent in an IPR proceeding, but Gibson Dunn persuaded the Patent Office to reject the challenges. Gibson Dunn then filed suit against 23 generic drug makers and, with expiration of Novartis’s compound patent fast approaching and the normal 30-month stay of FDA approval unavailable, won a preliminary injunction to maintain exclusivity. Litigation continued and one generic drug maker, HEC Pharma, finally remained in the case for the trial. The court rejected all challenges to the patent. Law360 featured this win, among others, in naming Gibson Dunn as one of its five Trials Groups of the Year for 2020.
• Defeated class claims for more than $415 million in a first-of-its-kind ramen noodle-related antitrust price-fixing case for Ottogi Corporation, Ltd. and Ottogi America, Inc. following a five-week trial in the Northern District of California. The long-running case, brought by classes of both direct and indirect purchasers under the Sherman Act §1 and state law analogues, respectively, sought treble damages, attorneys’ fees, and injunctive relief. This was the first federal trial in which price-fixing claims brought by both direct and indirect purchasers were tried to verdict before a single jury. The Daily Journal named the win among its Top 20 Defense Results in California, and The Am Law Litigation Daily recognized the team with “Litigator of the Week” honors.
• Scored a significant trial victory on behalf of private equity fund SIG Growth Equity Fund I, its managing agent Susquehanna Growth Equity, and two of its partners, defeating all fraud claims brought against them in the Delaware Court of Chancery. The case arose after private equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired Plimus, an e-commerce payment processing business, with SIG as the largest selling shareholder. Great Hill later sued the SIG defendants and others for alleged fraud in connection with Plimus’ sale. After the SIG defendants suffered multiple adverse decisions with prior counsel, Gibson Dunn was retained by Susquehanna International Group, the largest options trading platform in the world, to represent its private equity arm in Susquehanna’s most important litigation matter.