Class Action Defense

The stakes in antitrust class actions can be enormous. We defend price-fixing, monopolization, market allocation, vertical restraints, and abuse of dominance claims—including opt-out collective proceedings in the Competition Appeal Tribunal where quantum routinely runs into the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of pounds. We handle both follow-on claims founded on pre-existing regulatory infringement decisions and standalone claims requiring proof of anticompetitive behavior at trial.

We litigate securities class actions, shareholder derivative suits, and corporate governance disputes for companies and their officers and directors across state and federal courts. Our lawyers' understanding of applicable federal and state case law leads to outcomes that mitigate the commercial impact of litigation on clients' businesses, whether claims arise from mergers and acquisitions, regulatory changes, adverse business events, or initial public offerings.

Our privacy class-action defense spans all manner of claims, from alleged violations of specific federal and state privacy statutes—including the California Consumer Privacy Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Wiretap Act, and Biometric Information Privacy Act—to claims asserting common law intrusion upon seclusion and constitutional privacy rights. In England and Wales, we defend data breach group litigation arising under the U.K. GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 and advise on the evolving procedural mechanisms available to data claimant firms. Our privacy litigation team includes more than 70 lawyers focused exclusively on privacy matters, and we are ranked among the top-tier firms globally by Chambers.

We handle the full range of consumer class-action claims, including challenges to advertising practices, product labeling, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices under a patchwork of federal and state regulatory frameworks. We also advise on emerging attempts to reframe consumer and contract claims as competition law issues in order to access opt-out collective proceedings regimes.

In employment class-action litigation, we develop strategies to dispose of putative class actions before they gain traction, with proven track records of defeating certification of complex putative class actions. Our lawyers have tried and prevailed in multiple employment class-action cases, including wage-and-hour disputes, discrimination claims, independent contractor misclassification, and underpayment proceedings.

Our dedicated Product Liability team defends national and international manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and technology companies in claims worth hundreds of millions of dollars—reimagining the scope of product liability defense to address the modern supply chain. 

We defend claims arising from environmental disasters, climate-related disclosures, supply chain human rights allegations, and parent company duty-of-care theories—an area of rapid growth in both England and Australia.

Our team—comprising former DOJ prosecutors, SEC staff lawyers, and experienced trial lawyers—handles criminal and regulatory investigations that often precede or run parallel to class-action exposure, including proceedings before the DOJ, SEC, CFTC, FTC, FINRA, and state attorneys general. We coordinate the defense of regulatory and class-action litigation stemming from the same occurrence, managing differing timelines and discovery requirements with precision.

We represent policyholders in securing coverage for class-action defense costs and indemnity across all relevant policy lines—including CGL, D&O, EPL, and cyber risk policies—ensuring clients have the financial protection needed to mount an effective defense.