Rachael E. Meny

On behalf of Instacart, we have successfully defended against numerous class and collective actions across the country alleging that that shoppers who use Instacart’s technology platform should be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. We have won a number of early dispositive motions in these cases, including motions to compel individual arbitration and to enforce class and collective action bars.

We defended technology company Lyft against a putative class action that addressed an issue critical to the sharing economy: whether Lyft drivers have been misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees. The parties entered into a proposed settlement that did not require the re-classification of Lyft drivers as employees.

We defended Netflix and several of its senior executives from a high-profile defamation and blacklisting lawsuit. The plaintiff departed Netflix for Amazon, and later claimed that Netflix retaliated against him by making defamatory statements about him, wrongfully accusing him of taking confidential information, and inducing Amazon to fire him. We filed an early special motion to strike plaintiff’s complaint against the Netflix defendants pursuant to California’s anti-SLAPP statute, explaining why the plaintiff’s claims against the Netflix defendants were entirely premised on protected and privileged speech and did not establish a viable claim. The court granted our anti-SLAPP motion in its entirety, dismissing all of the plaintiff’s claims against the Netflix defendants only 5 ½ months after the complaint was filed.

A Virginia federal judge granted our motion for summary judgment on all but one of Suffolk’s patent infringement claims, and issued a Daubert ruling striking the plaintiff’s expert damages opinion in its entirety. Soon after, Suffolk stipulated to invalidity on the last remaining claim. Suffolk had claimed that Google’s Adsense advertising placement technology, which selectively places paid advertisements for a company’s product or service on the Web page of another, used a similar protocol to the one under patent with Suffolk.

We defended a popular ride-sharing company in this unfair competition case. Prior to the hearing on the first motion, we convinced the plaintiffs to dismiss our client from the complaint.

We defended Google in numerous state and federal court actions alleging trade secret misappropriation. The litigation began when our client left Microsoft Corporation to head Google’s China operations. We litigated the case through the preliminary injunction stage and resolved it on favorable terms.

We defended certain real estate investors against alter ego claims, in both state and federal court. These alter ego claims were brought in an effort to hold our clients personally liable for a $7.5 million judgment against their company and to pierce the corporate veil protecting our client's real estate investment firm. Following a multi-week bench trial, the court entered judgment for our clients and awarded them attorneys' fees.

We achieved an early resolution of numerous state and federal court actions for a venture fund company and one of its partners. Our clients faced trade secret misappropriation, copyright infringement, and breach of contract claims in both state court and in federal court. We were able to remove the state court action to federal court, and then secure an early settlement for our clients.

We defended automakers in multi-forum, antitrust litigation involving restrictions on car exports in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Plaintiffs, alleging a broad conspiracy among all major automobile manufacturers and distributors, sought damages of more than $1 billion. We won summary judgment in the lead federal litigation, in several state cases, and in the California state court class action. We also achieved early dismissal of numerous state court actions.

We defended a California county and certain of its Supervisors against claims that its land use decision regarding a Christian school violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and aspects of the US Constitution. After a multi-week trial in federal court, a jury resolved the case in our client’s favor, denying the school system's request for tens of millions in damages. The plaintiff appealed, but withdrew their appeal after receiving our appellate brief.

On behalf of a special committee of our client's board of directors, we conducted an international investigation into alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA.) We made a determination as to whether any FCPA violations occurred and handled the resolution of related governmental investigations and claims.

We represented a prisoner in a civil rights suit against three correctional officers who beat him in Pelican Bay State Prison and one officer who failed to intervene to stop the beating. After the plaintiff's case survived summary judgment, the federal court asked us to step in and represent him at trial. Following a five-day trial and five hours of jury deliberation, the defendants settled the case for nearly twice the number the plaintiff presented to the jury.

We defended Netflix and several of its senior executives from a high-profile defamation and blacklisting lawsuit. The plaintiff departed Netflix for Amazon, and later claimed that Netflix retaliated against him by making defamatory statements about him, wrongfully accusing him of taking confidential information, and inducing Amazon to fire him. We filed an early special motion to strike plaintiff’s complaint against the Netflix defendants pursuant to California’s anti-SLAPP statute, explaining why the plaintiff’s claims against the Netflix defendants were entirely premised on protected and privileged speech and did not establish a viable claim. The court granted our anti-SLAPP motion in its entirety, dismissing all of the plaintiff’s claims against the Netflix defendants only 5 ½ months after the complaint was filed.

We defended Google in numerous state and federal court actions alleging trade secret misappropriation. The litigation began when our client left Microsoft Corporation to head Google’s China operations. We litigated the case through the preliminary injunction stage and resolved it on favorable terms.

We defended a popular ride-sharing company in this unfair competition case. Prior to the hearing on the first motion, we convinced the plaintiffs to dismiss our client from the complaint.

On behalf of a special committee of our client's board of directors, we conducted an international investigation into alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA.) We made a determination as to whether any FCPA violations occurred and handled the resolution of related governmental investigations and claims.