Life Sciences

We represented Impax Laboratories, Inc. against Abbott and the French pharmaceutical company Fournier in a plaintiff-side antitrust case that alleged monopolization in a drug market. We led the trial presentation for all of the plaintiffs, and secured a settlement for Impax midway through the trial.

We represented Vividion Therapeutics’ founding chemist in knocking out claims alleging that he conspired to divert valuable intellectual property from the company’s $2 billion sale to Bayer. A Vividion investor sued for breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, aiding and abetting, and unjust enrichment after one of the scientist’s patents was licensed to a subsequent life sciences startup. The Delaware Chancery Court dismissed the case with prejudice after concluding that the claims were derivative, not direct, and that plaintiffs’ allegations were insufficient to take advantage of an exception to the ordinary rules for derivative claims.

We represented the founders of a biofuel start-up in an action brought by its majority shareholder and certain board members as a derivative action for alleged breaches of fiduciary duty. We won a dismissal of the derivative action on demurrer, and achieved a substantial settlement for our clients of their affirmative claims.

In a multi-district class action, plaintiffs challenged a drug company's product label under California's unfair competition law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act. We settled the case on extremely favorable terms to our client.

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 Statute. 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 led 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.

We represented a biotechnology company developing a drug for a rare genetic disease in arbitration proceedings over its rights to develop its sole product under a collaboration agreement with a large pharmaceutical company. With our assistance, on the first day of the arbitration the parties reached a favorable settlement, which provided for our client’s acquisition of the life-saving drug it is developing. The FDA has now approved the drug and our client successfully conducted an IPO.

We represented Intuitive Surgical in a securities fraud class action challenging statements the company made regarding its expected growth and financial health. After persuading the court to dismiss the complaint twice, we successfully defended the dismissal in the Ninth Circuit, securing a unanimous, 23-page published opinion—a rarity in any securities case.

We represented Revance, a biotechnology company which develops next-generation dermatology products and therapeutic medicines, in a Delaware Chancery Court bench trial. The trial determined Revance’s worldwide rights to its injectable botulinum toxin product, as well as its ground-breaking topical botox product. Days after the trial, we finalized a settlement which returned all global rights to develop and commercialize both products across all indications to Revance, and resolved all outstanding litigation between the companies.

We represented a major United States healthcare company in a federal criminal investigation conducted across multiple jurisdictions by the United States Department of Justice. Ultimately, no charges were filed against our client.

We represented plaintiff ConforMIS, the world’s leading designer, developer, and manufacturer of patient-specific knee implants as well as the surgical tools required to best fit those implants into a specific patient’s body. Our client asserted Wright Medical and MicroPort Orthopedics, which manufacture knee and ankle implant systems, infringed four patents that embody fundamental aspects of ConforMIS’s technology. We negotiated an extremely favorable settlement for ConforMIS that includes a significant royalty rate for future sales.

On behalf of Theravance, Inc., we quickly resolved disputes between the biopharmaceutical company and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) concerning a Collaboration Agreement and Strategic Alliance Agreement.

We convinced a Massachusetts federal judge to nix a False Claims Act lawsuit against our client Genentech Inc. along with Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. The relators accused the companies of off-label marketing and providing kickbacks to sell an asthma drug.

The government was attempting to intimidate our client by pursuing parallel criminal and civil False Claims Act claims involving the marketing of a late-stage cancer drug. After we intervened, we received a letter from the U.S. Attorney declining to prosecute, greatly reducing our client’s potential exposure. We continue to defend our client from the civil case.

We represented Shareholder Representative Services (SRS) in its role as representative of the former shareholders of FerroKin Biosciences in a post-merger dispute with Shire Pharmaceuticals, which had refused to make a $45 million milestone payment related to the development of an experimental iron chelation drug. After a four-day bench trial, the Delaware Chancery Court entered judgment in favor of SRS, ruling in a 77-page opinion that the former FerroKin shareholders were entitled to the overdue $45 million milestone, as well as five years of interest on the payment and their attorneys’ fees and costs, which totaled more than $80 million. The judgment of the Court of Chancery was unanimously affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court.

We represented a nonprofit research institute in its lawsuit against a giant pharmaceutical company regarding the latter’s refusal to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties it was owed for its intellectual property in a blockbuster drug. Following positive rulings on the merits of the case, we negotiated a very favorable settlement that entitles our client to ongoing royalties.

We defended The Scripps Research Institute and two award-winning chemists against a lawsuit brought by a venture capital firm partner who alleged he had entered into an oral joint venture agreement to develop and commercialize groundbreaking carbon-hydrogen activation technology. After nearly 18 months of litigation, the court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants, which was affirmed on appeal.

We currently represent Shareholder Representative Services (SRS) in its capacity as representative of the former shareholders of Ablation Frontiers Inc. in a post-merger dispute with Medtronic, Inc. in Delaware Chancery Court. Medtronic has refused to make milestone payments totaling $175 million that are due to the former shareholders based on recent FDA approvals of a novel catheter Ablation Frontiers invented and developed for treatment of atrial fibrillation prior to the merger