Judgment and Arbitral Award Enforcement

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is the leader in global judgment and arbitral award enforcement.  We provide innovative enforcement strategies and creative solutions for both creditors and debtors.

Our Judgment and Arbitral Award Enforcement Practice Group offers top-tier international arbitral award and judgment enforcement strategies and solutions, deep proficiency in cross-border litigation and international arbitration, and best-in-class advocacy that not only applies the law, but, time and again, has crafted and shaped new law to achieve our clients’ objectives.

Gibson Dunn has substantial experience designing creative and highly effective worldwide enforcement strategies.  Our winning strategies involve analysis of the judgment debtor’s business, assets and financial conditions, through both publicly available information and information developed by trusted investigators around the globe.  We then use our experience to develop the most effective course of enforcement – including both prejudgment and post-judgment actions in multiple jurisdictions around the world.  Gibson Dunn also excels at defending companies and individuals against fraudulent arbitration awards and foreign judgments, exposing massive frauds and corporate shakedown attempts in the process.

We offer integrated litigation strategies that run from start to finish:  Our work towards enforcing an arbitral award or judgment begins at the inception of the dispute process, not just once an award or judgment has been issued.

Before a judgment or an arbitral award is even issued, we routinely work with counsel – whether within Gibson Dunn’s international arbitration group, Gibson Dunn’s transnational litigation practice or outside the firm – to plot an enforcement strategy that will realize our client’s anticipated award.  Through the use of all the available tools, including, among others, prejudgment attachments, fraudulent transfer actions, and 28 U.S.C. § 1782 discovery petitions, we have been able to put our clients ahead of other creditors, resulting in the actual collection of billions of dollars in judgment and arbitral awards that many deemed unrecoverable.

We believe in bespoke enforcement strategies.  Ours have no template because every enforcement action is different: different debtors, with different assets in different jurisdictions.

Our lawyers have been recognized for obtaining results where others have failed or where the issues are of first impression.  The American Lawyer’s Am Law Litigation Daily named our group’s co-chair Robert Weigel as a Litigator of the Week for obtaining, on behalf of Crystallex, one of the largest enforcement victories to date against a sovereign debtor, helping Crystallex become the first (and, to date, only) judgment creditor of Venezuela (or PDVSA, its national oil company) to obtain judicial authorization to attach key United States-based assets.  Indeed, Gibson Dunn’s work defending that unprecedented victory was recognized by The American Lawyer when it named Gibson Dunn its 2020 Litigation Department of the Year, our firm’s fourth win in the last six of the publication’s biennial “Litigation Department of the Year” competitions.

Matt McGill, the group’s other co-chair, represented NML Capital in its 10-year litigation against the Republic of Argentina in what the Financial Times called “the trial of the century in sovereign debt restructuring.”  Mr. McGill won an important victory before the U.S. Supreme Court that confirmed the availability of discovery in aid of enforcement of money judgments against foreign sovereigns, helping set the stage for NML’s multibillion-dollar settlement of its claims.

Gibson Dunn has also been lauded for its representation of Chevron Corporation in its successful RICO suit against the purveyors of what The Wall Street Journal called the legal “fraud of the century” and its exposure of a $9.2 billion Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron as the product of fraud and bribery.  Most recently, Gibson Dunn lawyers were again named by the Am Law Litigation Daily as Litigators of the Week for defeating efforts to recognize a sham $18 billion arbitral award against Chevron Corporation and Chevron U.S.A. Inc.

The strength of our group is not limited to its co-chairs.  Gibson Dunn has premier enforcement-focused practitioners across the world.  Our team includes lawyers through the United States, as well as in London, Paris, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong.  Members of the group have been at the forefront of major cases that have shaped judgment and arbitral award enforcement law in the United States and around the world.