- In 2005, Morgan Lewis was approached by Sister Helen Prejean (portrayed in the film Dead Man Walking) about undertaking the representation of Texas death row inmate Cathy Henderson. Although Cathy’s case was far along in the habeas process, we assisted Cathy’s appointed counsel in presenting oral arguments before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then prepared an ultimately unsuccessful writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court of the United States. As a last effort to save Cathy’s life, we gathered four new expert reports showing that the previous opinion and testimony of the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), the prosecution’s primary witness, was based on outdated and flawed science. In early June 2007, we obtained an affidavit from the now-retired CMO saying that he could no longer opine as he had in the original trial. This pivotal affidavit and the expert reports formed the basis of an extraordinary writ that we filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Two days before Cathy’s scheduled execution, the court granted our application for a writ, stayed the execution, and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.
- Scored significant victories in two separate appeals arising from ongoing employee benefits litigation on behalf of a major managed healthcare company.
- Secured a significant victory in June 2006, when the Third Circuit issued the first appellate decision on the requirements for class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(c)(1)(B). The court of appeals held that federal courts must be more precise in defining the bounds of class actions. Where class certification is sought under Rule 23(b)(3), the court then must determine whether those common claims, issues, and defenses predominate over individual matters. In this particular case, although the district court on remand entered a revised class certification order, the specification of common claims, issues, and defenses omitted any mention of damages, thus confirming our client’s position that no damages can be awarded on a classwide basis. The new Rule 23(c)(1)(B) thus had the intended effect of identifying and narrowing the matters that potentially could be decided on a classwide basis.
- Obtained another win in April 2007 when the Third Circuit overturned a district court decision regarding the “fiduciary exception” to the attorney-client privilege. The district court had invoked the exception as a basis for rejecting our client’s otherwise valid privilege claims. The fiduciary exception to the attorney-client privilege arose in the trust context. Our client is neither a trust nor a trustee, but a for-profit corporation with interests different from (and sometimes contrary to) the interests of beneficiaries of employee health plans. The client had also paid for its legal counsel from its own funds, not from any trust assets. Our attorneys successfully argued before the court of appeals that the fiduciary exception had no application in relation to a private insurer such as our client. The court therefore reversed the district court’s decision and vacated the order requiring production of our client’s privileged documents.
- Obtained a significant ruling in the Third Circuit on behalf of a major oil company against a national insurance company. The court’s opinion affirmed an order of the district court requiring the insurance company to pay all of our client’s defense and investigation costs in connection with more than 70 lawsuits that have been filed against it seeking damages arising from the manufacture, sale, and distribution of the gasoline additive MTBE. As a result of this recent opinion, the insurance company is obligated to reimburse our client for more than $14 million in past defense costs and will remain obligated to pay for up to $36 million in future defense and investigation costs.
- In a 2-1 published opinion issued in October 2005, the majority of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed a 2002 judgment by the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, which had enjoined our client, a manufacturing company, and its affiliate from collecting on $11.2 million of a $29.6 million jury verdict that our client had obtained in Minnesota state court. The majority found that the district court’s injunction violated the federal Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283. In June 2006, the Supreme Court denied a petition for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision.
- Just before trial, and after a partial summary judgment against our client had been entered by the district court in New Orleans awarding monetary damages, we took over an international maritime case for the Government of Ukraine in 2004 that was more than two years into litigation. We successfully appealed to the Fifth Circuit, leading to an order by the district court rescinding the judgment and, ultimately, to the dismissal of all remaining claims against the Ukrainian government. The case involved the theft of a Ukrainian cruise ship while it was under charter by its owner. By forging documents of sale, securing and then defaulting on a fraudulent mortgage loan, and chartering the ship to a failing cruise company that went bankrupt, the perpetrators of the international fraud stranded the ship’s international crew in New Orleans. This gave rise to claims by the crew and the mortgage lender, as well as suppliers in the port.