Complex Commercial Litigation

We represent clients in a wide variety of complex commercial disputes involving claims for breach of contract or fiduciary duty or violations of antitrust and other laws. Our litigations of this nature have included representation of:

• Cantor Fitzgerald Securities in litigation over the guarantee by Dow Jones & Co. of payments to Cantor for government securities data that Cantor provided to a financial services provider.

• Morgans Hotel Group Co., a public company, and certain of its affiliates in litigations pending in New York and Florida state courts concerning the management of a hotel pursuant to a long-term contract and Morgans' initial public offering in 2006.

• MTI Machine Vision, L.L.C. , a Rhode Island software company known for its semiconductor wafer-reading algorithms, in an arbitration against DVT Corporation in which MTI recovered from DVT a payment required under the parties' earnout agreement in connection with DVT's purchase of MTI's assets.

• A venture capital firm and its principals as defendants in a suit alleging breach of a contract to transfer stock options; after a five-day trial, the jury found for the defendants after deliberating for just over an hour.

• Converse Inc., the footwear manufacturer, for which we obtained a jury verdict after a three-week trial in a fraud and breach of contract case arising out of an acquisition.

• A leading telecommunications company in a multidistrict antitrust class action that has been brought against all the major U.S. wireless carriers, alleging that the carriers illegally tie the sale of handsets to the sale of wireless service.

• Amazon.com, Inc. in a shareholders derivative suit in which the plaintiffs allege that the fees charged by Amazon's investment bankers in connection with several bond offerings violated state-law limitations on loan brokers' fees.

• Honeywell, Inc. in a software licensing and copyright dispute that was settled after a two-week trial in New Jersey federal court.

• The Liquidating Trustee of the SmarTalk Teleservices bankruptcy estate, in litigation alleging breach of fiduciary duty and fraud by SmarTalk's investment banker in connection with an acquisition, and fraud and aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty by other parties.

• A multinational pharmaceutical company in various federal court actions involving commercial disputes and termination of a foreign distributor.

• A major energy production and distribution company in connection with disputes throughout North and South America.

• The members of the Board of Managers of one of the premier residential buildings in Manhattan in litigation brought by one of the building's unit holders.

• A leading Brazilian company in the successful defense of a fee dispute with a U.S. investment bank, which dropped its fee claim against our client in the middle of trial.

• A Hong Kong group of firms on malpractice claims against U.S.-based legal and financial advisors arising out of the firms' loss of their equity and unsecured creditor claims in the wind-up of a Chinese infrastructure project.