We work in virtually every area of commercial litigation, and much of our work involves disputes that cut across multiple practice groups. In recent years, we have tried to judgment a variety of contract, fiduciary duty, fraud, unfair competition, partnership, employment and other complex commercial disputes spanning industries as diverse as entertainment, finance, apparel, energy, and consumer products. While we often litigate on behalf of entities that are otherwise corporate clients of the firm, roughly two-thirds of our caseload comes from clients who have retained us for our special litigation expertise.

We have the resources to draw on different practice groups and assemble a team that can master even the largest and most complex litigation. But we also believe in lean staffing to maximize efficiency and ensure that every lawyer on each case is fully conversant with the facts and issues. Our lawyers also are skilled in and frequently use Alternative Dispute Resolution techniques to achieve results for our clients.

Principal Areas of Focus

• Advertising
• Alternative Dispute Resolution 
• Antitrust 
• Appellate and Constitutional Litigation 
• Bankruptcy Litigation 
• Commercial Litigation 
• Employment Law 
• ERISA 
• Insurance Litigation 
• IP Litigation 
• International Dispute Resolution 
• Real Estate Litigation 
• Securities and Shareholder Litigation 
• White Collar Defense

Representative Clients/Cases

Recent commercial litigation representations reflect the diversity of our cases and clients: 

• We successfully won dismissal in favor of Kenneth Langone, former Chair of the New York Stock Exchange Compensation Committee, of all charges brought against him by then Attorney General Eliot Spitzer relating to the compensation of NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso. On July 1, 2008, the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit that had been brought against Kenneth Langone, who had been sued along with Mr. Grasso by Spitzer for breach of fiduciary duty based on alleged violations of the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law. The firm vigorously defended Mr. Langone through more than four years of protracted litigation that included 61 depositions taken over the course of 118 days, and dozens of decisions by the trial court and appellate courts. The last such decision from the appeals court threw out the remaining claims against Mr. Grasso and dismissed the claim against Mr. Langone based on the NYSE’s conversion to a for-profit entity. The majority opinion stated that no public interest would be served through monies gained that would go to the NYSE’s for-profit successor, New York Stock Exchange LLC. The court also determined that the attorney general’s power to pursue the claims lapsed when the NYSE became a for-profit corporation. Following the decision by the Appellate Division, the Attorney General announced he would not appeal and dropped the case. 
  
  
• We are representing Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu against class action and other claims arising from the bankruptcy of international dairy conglomerate Parmalat Finanziara S.p.A., with alleged losses exceeding $10 billion. These litigations, the first of which were filed in 2004, have been consolidated for pretrial proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They have entailed Kramer Levin’s participation in discovery or depositions in the United States and numerous foreign countries, including Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, the Cayman Islands, Canada and South Africa. Three of the cases against Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu have been dismissed and another settled. 
  
  
• We successfully defended the Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company in litigation relating to the hiring and termination of Michael Ovitz. On June 8, 2006, a unanimous Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the judgment entered on August 9, 2005 by the Court of Chancery in The Walt Disney Company Derivative Litigation dismissing all claims in a plaintiffs’ derivative action against Michael Eisner and other current or former directors of The Walt Disney Company. In a 91-page opinion written by Justice Jack Jacobs, the Supreme Court found that the “Chancellor’s factual findings and legal rulings were correct and not erroneous in any respect.” The findings and rulings of Chancellor William B. Chandler III were set out in his 174-page opinion which laid out in close detail the sequence of events leading to both the hiring and termination of Ovitz. Based on his review of the 37-day trial record (which included almost five days of testimony from Mr. Eisner), the Chancellor concluded that Mr. Eisner’s actions “were taken in good faith” and “with the subjective belief that those actions were in the best interests of the Company.” The Supreme Court found that the record – including the “Chancellor’s assessment of the credibility of Mr. Eisner” – supported the determination that Mr. “Eisner’s conduct satisfied the standards required of him as a fiduciary.” 
  
  
• We represented J. Pedro Reinhard, a former CFO and member of the board of directors of Dow Chemical in a highly publicized dispute between Mr. Reinhard and Dow. In allegations published on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, Dow accused Mr. Reinhard, along with another Dow executive, of planning a takeover of the company while concealing that plan from Dow's Board and CEO. We filed a defamation and breach of contract action on behalf of Mr. Reinhard and defended him against breach of fiduciary claims brought by Dow. Following a year of hotly contested litigation in Dow's home State of Michigan, the parties agreed to settle the matter on mutually satisfactory terms. 
  
  
• In one of the largest false advertising verdicts ever, a jury in the Eastern District of Virginia found Mead Johnson liable for falsely claiming that its Enfamil infant formula provided superior nutrition compared to store brand infant formula manufactured by Kramer Levin client PBM Products, and awarded PBM $13.5 million in damages. The Court also completely dismissed Mead Johnson’s $40 million Lanham Act counterclaim, and issued a permanent injunction barring Mead Johnson from making false claims about PBM's infant formula and directing Mead Johnson to retrieve the offending advertisements from the public domain. 
  
  
• We represent Johnson & Johnson in its suit against Guidant Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation and Abbott Laboratories. The case was listed in the December 2006 issue of American Lawyer in the "Big Suits" section. Seeking $5.5 billion in damages, Johnson & Johnson alleges that Guidant violated a merger agreement between the two companies when Guidant gave confidential due diligence to Abbott Laboratories, which was not a formal bidder for Guidant, in connection with Boston Scientific's rival takeover proposal. A clause in the merger agreement between Johnson & Johnson and Guidant prohibited Guidant from sharing confidential information with any non-formal bidders. In an August 29, 2007 decision, Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the Southern District of New York sustained J&J's claim for breach of the merger agreement against Guidant's motion to dismiss. See Johnson & Johnson v. Guidant Corp., 525 Supp.2d 336 (S.D.N.Y. 2007). While the Court also granted Abbott's and Boston Scientific's motions to dismiss the claim for tortious interference asserted against them, J&J recently has sought leave of the Court to amend its Complaint to re-assert the claim of tortious interference based on the discovery that it has received. 
  
  
• We are defending United Rentals, Inc., the largest equipment rental company in the world, in class action litigation relating to its failed merger agreement with an affiliate of Cerberus Partners. In August 2009, the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut granted, with prejudice, our motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ second consolidated amended complaint. That decision is presently on appeal. We previously represented United Rentals in an SEC inquiry concerning the Company's historical accounting practices and defended it in class action and derivative shareholder litigation brought in the wake of the announcement of the SEC inquiry. Both the SEC inquiry and the class action litigation were resolved in 2008. 
  
  
• We recently won a major false advertising victory for Bracco Diagnostics Inc. The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey awarded Bracco extremely broad relief against false advertising defendant GE Healthcare, including a permanent injunction barring GE’s false claims of superior safety for its Visipaque x-ray contrast agent, an order requiring GE to issue a corrective press release and corrective advertisements and to retrain its sales and marketing personnel, together with $11.4 million in compensatory damages (one of the largest awards to date in a false advertising action). GE, which had asserted a broad counterclaim against Bracco, was awarded no legal or equitable relief. Central to the dispute were false claims that GE’s promotional materials and its sales representatives made to customers regarding the purported superior safety of GE’s x-ray contrast agent Visipaque over Bracco’s competing Isovue product. Bracco and GE are arch-competitors in the market for x-ray contrast agents, which are one of the largest selling prescription pharmaceuticals by volume in the U.S. 
  
  
• We represented Neutrogena Corp., maker of the Neutrogena line of sunscreens, in a litigation battle against Schering-Plough Healthcare Products, Inc., the maker of the Coppertone sunscreen line, with respect to the parties' advertising for their Sport line of sunscreens. Each side challenged the other's advertising, but the United States District Court for the District of Delaware enjoined Schering-Plough's advertising for its Coppertone Sport products while leaving most of Neutrogena's advertising intact. 
  
  
• United States District Judge William H. Pauley III in July 2009 in “the latest skirmish in the tampon advertising wars” denied Playtex’s motion to preliminarily enjoin our client Procter & Gamble from airing advertising that its Tampax Pearl tampons are superior to Playtex’s Gentle Glide tampons. Playtex and P&G had been locked in tampon advertising litigation since 2002. In 2003, the Court issued a permanent injunction enjoining P&G from claiming that Tampax Pearl provided superior leakage protection compared to Playtex’s Gentle Glide. In February 2008, the Court granted the unusual remedy of modifying the injunction, holding that P&G’s product had sufficiently changed from the version P&G marketed in 2003 that was the subject of the injunction, and that P&G’s tests proved that its product was now superior to Playtex’s with respect to leakage protection. After Playtex notified P&G that Playtex also had changed its tampon product, Playtex moved to enjoin P&G from making claims of superior leakage protection. Following a preliminary injunction hearing, the Court ruled in P&G's favor and denied Playtex’s motion. 
  
  
• We represent Joseph Abboud in a dispute between him and JA Apparel Corp as to whether our client’s sale of his eponymous trademarks to JA Apparel included the use of his signature name to identify himself professionally in connection with his commercial activities; and, if not, whether federal trademark law afforded him “fair use” of his “individual name in his own business,” notwithstanding his sale of such trademarks. In a victory for our client, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated an injunction prohibiting Abboud from using his name “commercially,” particularly, in connection with his new “JAZ” collection of high-end men’s clothing, and remanded the case for further proceedings before the U.S. District Court for the SDNY. 
  
  
• Kramer Levin has represented Forest City Ratner Companies, LLC ("FCR") in all litigation relating to FCR's 22-acre Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, which includes development of an arena that will be home to the Nets NBA basketball team, 16 other residential and commercial buildings (including affordable housing), and major transportation improvements and eight acres of public open space. Project opponents have brought multiple suits in federal and state courts, claiming, among other things, that the determination of the Empire State Development Corporation ("ESDC"), a New York State entity, to use eminent domain to acquire property in the project footprint was unconstitutional, that the project's environmental review was inadequate, that the project approvals were based on a false determination that the project site is blighted, that the arena fails to qualify as a "civic project" under ESDC's enabling statute, and that 2009 modifications to the project approvals were unlawful and not subjected to sufficient environmental study. All of these litigations have resulted in favorable determinations sustaining the project approvals. 
  
  
• Kramer Levin has represented Sirius XM Radio Inc. (Sirius) in the successful defense of claims brought in an AAA arbitration by U.S. Electronics, Inc. (“USE”) arising from agreements between Sirius and USE that gave USE a non-exclusive right to design, manufacture and distribute radios capable of receiving the Sirius satellite radio service. USE asserted claims of breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, tortious interference with contract, tortious interference with prospective business relations and unfair competition; USE further alleged that Sirius acted in bad faith so as to preclude the enforcement of a limitation of liability provision excluding lost profits damages. USE sought $133 million in damages. The case was tried before a panel of three arbitrators and consumed 20 days of hearings. After extensive post-hearing submissions and closing arguments, the panel issued a 149-page Award dismissing with prejudice all of USE’s claims, finding in great detail that none of the allegations of wrongdoing had been proven and that Sirius had acted in good faith, enforcing the limitation of liability provision, and denying USE any recovery. USE subsequently filed a petition to vacate the Award in Supreme Court, New York County, alleging evident partiality on the part of one of the arbitrators and also alleging that the panel exceeded their power and acted in manifest disregard of the law. Sirius cross-moved to confirm the Award. The Commercial Division of the Supreme Court denied USE‘s petition, granted Sirius’ cross-motion and entered judgment confirming the Award. USE appealed from this judgment to the Appellate Division - First Department on the issue of alleged evident partiality. On May 11, 2010, the Appellate Division entered its unanimous decision and order, ruling against USE and in favor of Sirius by affirming the judgment.
  
  
• We represent SIGA Technologies, Inc., a biotech company that designs and develops products to be used to defend against biological warfare agents, in a dispute against PharmAthene regarding the development of an anti-viral drug to combat smallpox. The litigation is pending in Delaware Chancery Court with alleged losses exceeding a billion dollars.
  
  
• We represent Nomura Canada in a series of litigations relating to a stock loan trading fraud involving MJK Securities.
  
  
• We successfully represented Anthony Westreich (Monday Properties, Inc.) in litigation brought against him by former business partner Adam Hochfelder. 
  
  
• The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted summary judgment in favor of Kramer Levin clients Joan Langbord, Roy Langbord and David Langbord on their claims that the United States Mint violated their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by confiscating ten 1933 Double Eagle gold coins without due process of law. The Court found no legitimate reason for the government’s failure to comply with its constitutional obligations and explicitly rejected the government’s argument that its warrantless seizure of the coins and its failure to provide the Langbords with a predeprivation hearing were justified by the government’s unproven assertion that the coins had been stolen from the US Mint more than 75 years ago. 
  
  
• We successfully represented Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Franklin Mutual, UMB and HSBC as holders and indenture trustees of LAX and SFO municipal airport bonds in appellate valuation litigation concerning United Air Lines’ property at SFO and LAX airports, obtaining a Seventh Circuit ruling that more than doubled the recovery of LAX bondholders. 
  
  
• We represent numerous defrauded Madoff investors with respect to their rights in connection with potential litigation in the Madoff Investment Securities bankruptcy. 
  
  
• We represented W.R. Grace & Co. Equity Committee in a mass tort bankruptcy involving litigation over the validity of billions of dollars of asserted asbestos claims. 
  
  
• We won summary judgment for El-Ad in an action arising out of the unconsummated $201 million sale of an office building in Tribeca. The NY Supreme Court, Commercial Division, declared the buyer in default of the purchase and sale agreement and rejected the buyer’s contention that it had grounds to avoid closing and as a result, the court awarded the buyer’s $15 million deposit to El-Ad. 
  
  
• We won summary judgment for Illinois Union against Wendy’s in a suit that had charged Illinois Union with bad faith for its refusal to indemnify Wendy’s and its wholly-owned subsidiary Triune Corporation for the millions of dollars they had paid to settle claims brought by certain franchisees based on alleged misrepresentations and deceptive business practices. Illinois Union had refused coverage under its policy on the ground that Wendy’s and Triune had not complied with the policy’s timely notice requirements. In a case of first impression under Ohio law, the court held that the insureds’ failure to satisfy the notice requirements of this “claims-made” policy barred coverage regardless of any showing by the insurer that it had been prejudiced thereby, and despite the fact that the notice obligation appeared in the policy as a “condition” to coverage rather than as part of the policy’s insuring clause.