We represented the former shareholders of Auris Health, a revolutionary robotic surgery startup, in an earnout dispute with its acquiror, Johnson & Johnson. The former shareholders alleged that Johnson & Johnson breached the merger agreement and defrauded the shareholders, resulting in its failure to achieve certain earnout milestones. After four years of litigation—including approximately 70 depositions, nine experts, and a 10-day trial—the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled on September 4, 2024, that Johnson & Johnson owed the former shareholders more than $1 billion in damages. The Court’s 145-page decision set a major precedent and is the largest earnout-related damages award in Delaware history.

We represented Cerberus Capital Management, a leading private equity firm, in a breach of contract action against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), one of Canada’s largest banks. The dispute centered on two complex structured finance transactions. We argued a successful appeal in which the First Department agreed with Cerberus’s interpretation of the agreements and held that CIBC’s contrary interpretation was “unmoored” from the contracts. Following a two-week bench trial against CIBC, Justice Cohen resolved all liability issues in Cerberus’s favor. After a subsequent damages hearing and a related decision that rejected nearly all of CIBC’s damages arguments, the New York Supreme Court entered judgment for Cerberus for $855 million.

We represented an ad hoc group of term lenders, in New York Supreme Court, alleging defendants TriMark, its equity sponsors, and several of its other lenders violated the governing credit agreement by issuing new senior debt that effectively turned plaintiffs’ first-lien debt into third-lien debt and by issuing new “super senior” debt without inviting plaintiffs to participate. Plaintiffs alleged that the credit agreement did not allow defendants to amend it without their consent or to strip them of their pro rata and priority payment rights. The parties settled the case, with TriMark allowing the former first-lien lenders to exchange their debt for new “super senior” debt and to pay all lenders’ attorneys’ fees.

We defended a technology-focused venture capital firm and its founders in a long-running arbitration against a group of former passive investors challenging a management-buyout transaction. The investors asserted claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and unjust enrichment. After a week-long hearing, in which we demonstrated the fundamental unfairness of the claimants’ demands and significant flaws in their arguments, the panel ruled in our clients’ favor, concluding they did not breach any contract and acted with subjective good faith, consistent with their fiduciary duties. 

We represented Chilean businessman Álvaro Saieh Bendeck, Chairman of Corp Group, and several of his family members and business associates in a cross-border dispute. The matter concerned claims brought in a Chilean court by creditors of a subsidiary that violated a permanent injunction ordered by a Delaware bankruptcy court. The Delaware court granted our motion for injunctive relief and ordered the recovery of 100% of the attorneys' fees associated with bringing the action.

We represent the authors of the widely lauded children's book, And Tango Makes Three, as well as school children and their parents, in a First Amendment case involving the removal and restriction of the book in multiple Florida school districts. In a significant settlement in a battle against the School Board and other school district employees of Nassau County, Florida, the district was required to restore students’ public school library access to Tango and 35 other books challenged by Citizens Defending Freedom (CDF), a national special interest group leading the charge on book banning throughout Florida. 

We represent a class of over 100,000 Tennesseans who were improperly disenrolled from TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid program, in securing a ruling that holds the program violated the class’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Medicaid Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The court found that TennCare’s system was “rife with flaws” that ultimately created a barrier to coverage through erroneous eligibility determinations, incorrect notices, hidden reconsideration policies for enrollees, and unwritten appeals policies that directly contradict written rules. 

We represented public service workers, members of the American Federation of Teachers union, in a settlement of a nationwide class action lawsuit with Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers, challenging Navient’s practices with respect to advising federal student loan borrowers on Public Service Loan Forgiveness. We secured approval of a novel class settlement under which Navient agreed, among other things, to enhance its practices for public service workers and, in addition, to contribute millions to a nonprofit organization that provides education and student loan counseling. 

We secured a $145 million settlement for mutual fund shareholders who purchased, sold, or liquidated mutual fund shares managed by Allianz Global Investors U.S. LLC's Structured Property Groups from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2020. The complaint alleged that AllianzGI committed securities fraud from 2015-2020 through a scheme to defraud mutual fund investors by making false and misleading statements that substantially understated the risks.

Working with Legal Aid Society, we defended the rent stabilization laws that protect hundreds of thousands of tenants in New York State, helping families stay in their homes and securing their right to have their voices heard in court. We successfully obtained dismissals of the five suits at the district court level, then secured favorable rulings in all five before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The landlords petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari review, but the Court denied them all, leaving in place our sweeping victories in all five cases.

For more than seven years, we represented the Federal Housing Finance Agency as lead counsel across FHFA’s entire platform of RMBS litigation, obtaining $25 billion in recoveries for U.S. taxpayers in residential mortgage-backed securities suits against Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Countrywide, Deutsche Bank, First Horizon, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, RBS, and UBS.

We represented SJP Properties, a New York-based real estate developer, in obtaining a unanimous reversal from the Appellate Division, First Department of a trial court decision ordering SJP to tear down numerous floors of its residential building at 200 Amsterdam Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The New York Court of Appeals subsequently denied the challengers’ motion for leave to appeal, bringing the lengthy battle to a close.