Thomas E. Gorman

We defended Sutter Health from an antitrust lawsuit filed by California’s Attorney General in San Francisco Superior Court. The suit alleges that Sutter exploited its size and reach to extract “illegally inflated prices” from insurers, employers, and patients.

At the pleading stage, we successfully defeated a putative class action filed against Major League Baseball, its current and former Commissioners, and all 30 Baseball Clubs. The plaintiffs, two former baseball scouts, claimed that defendants had violated federal and state antitrust law by allegedly conspiring to decrease competition in the labor market for scouts. By convincing the court that the employment of baseball scouts falls within the scope of Baseball’s antitrust exemption, we successfully obtained a complete dismissal.

We won summary judgment of non-infringement for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. and its subsidiary TSMC, North America in a long-running patent lawsuit brought by North Carolina semiconductor company, Ziptronix, Inc. Ziptronix had asserted nine patents and more than 500 patent claims directed to TSMC’s manufacturing of semiconductors for use in backside-illumination image sensors used predominantly in smartphone cameras. On behalf of TSMC, we defeated Ziptronix’s claims by arguing that the territorial limits of U.S. patent law prohibited reaching TSMC’s business transactions and manufacturing operations in Taiwan.

We successfully defended Major League Baseball, its Commissioner and 30 Baseball Clubs from a putative class action. The plaintiffs, former minor league players, alleged that minor league baseball’s labor system violates federal antitrust law. We convinced the court to dismiss the complaint because Baseball’s antitrust exemption bars plaintiffs’ claims.

We won a complete defense judgment in favor of McKesson after a month-long trial of a qui tam action alleging violations of the False Claims Act and Anti-Kickback Statue. The trial victory allowed McKesson to avoid paying nearly $1 billion in fines, and to avoid the collateral penalties that government agencies can impose on companies found to have paid illegal kickbacks. The Justice Department’s complaint charged McKesson with paying kickbacks to a nursing home operator in the form of underpriced services, and with submitting “legally false claims” to the government. After we had the whistleblower dismissed, a key victory, we then won dismissal of related claims that the nursing home’s supplier subsidiary failed to comply with Medicare supplier standards. With the case’s scope significantly narrowed, we lead our client through a bench trial which featured 24 witnesses, hundreds of exhibits and post-trial briefing. The judge ruled in our client’s favor, vindicating McKesson and its employees. This victory was listed by the National Law Journal as one of the year's five most significant trial wins.

The city of San Jose sued our client, Major League Baseball, alleging antitrust violations and various state law claims related to the Oakland Athletics possible relocation to San Jose. The lawsuit claimed that Major League Baseball and its commissioner violated state and federal laws regarding unfair business practices and anticompetitive conduct. It also challenged the exemption to antitrust laws that the U.S. Supreme Court first upheld for Major League Baseball in 1922. We successfully moved to dismiss plaintiffs’ antitrust claims, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling, and we convinced the Supreme Court of the United States to decline a petition for certiorari.

When a group of technology companies refused to settle a patent infringement suit on the terms plaintiff demanded, the plaintiff filed a second suit—this time against the defendants and their defensive patent aggregator—for violation of US antitrust laws. The plaintiff’s novel theory—that defensive patent-aggregation represents a monopsony “buyer’s cartel”—would have threatened the concept of patent aggregators as a whole. Along with our co-defendants, we filed a motion to dismiss attacking plaintiff’s theory and were able to secure an early and very favorable settlement for our client. The court later granted the motion to dismiss as to the remaining defendants.

Plaintiffs filed a putative class action against Major League Baseball, the Commissioner, and the 30 Clubs demanding that our clients install protective netting from foul pole to foul pole at every Major League and Minor League ballpark. We moved to dismiss the case for lack of standing, lack of personal jurisdiction, improper venue, and failure to state a single claim for relief. The court granted our motion to dismiss.