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David Boies is considered one of the top US lawyers.
From Wikipedia
Notable cases
- At Cravath, Boies assisted top litigator Thomas D. Barr in defending IBM in the 13-year antitrust cases brought by the Justice Department and many private competitors.
- Also at Cravath, he represented the Justice Department in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Boies won a "victory" at trial,[8] and the verdict was upheld on appeal. The appellate court overturned the relief ordered (breakup of the company) back to the trial court for further proceedings. Thereafter, the George W. Bush administration settled the case. Bill Gates said Boies was "out to destroy Microsoft".[9] In 2001, the Washington Monthly called Boies "a brilliant trial lawyer", "a latter-day Clarence Darrow", and "a mad genius" for his work on the Microsoft case.[8]
- Boies represented New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a suit against Major League Baseball. This involved an action against all the teams. The Atlanta Braves were owned by Time Warner, a longtime Cravath client, who objected to his representation of the Yankees.
- He defended CBS in the action brought by General William Westmoreland. The general abandoned his case during the trial.
- Following the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he represented Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore.[9] In Jay Roach's Recount, which focuses on the case, Boies is played by Ed Begley Jr.
- Boies defended Napster when the company was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for facilitating copyright infringement.
- In November 2003, he represented Andrew Fastow, deposed Chief Financial Officer of Enron.
- Boies' firm was retained by the SCO Group, during the SCO–Linux controversies, in their pursuit of alleged infringement of their rights to the Unix intellectual properties. He spoke to the media about the case, but never personally appeared in court.
- In 2006, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP negotiated a major settlement with The American International Group on behalf of its client, C. V. Starr, a firm controlled by Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chairman and chief executive of A.I.G.[10] In 2015 Boies won at trial a claim that the government's $85 billion bailout of AIG had been unfair to the company's owners.[11] Boies has appealed, asking for greater money damages.
- Boies negotiated on behalf of American Express two of the highest civil antitrust settlements ever for an individual company: $2.25 billion from Visa, and $1.8 billion from MasterCard.[12]
- Boies is representing filmmaker Michael Moore regarding a Treasury Department investigation into Moore's trip to Cuba while filming for Sicko.[13]
- On June 24, 2009, following the California Supreme Court ruling on Strauss v. Horton, Boies joined former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the opposing attorney in Bush v. Gore, in the lawsuit Perry v. Brown seeking to overturn the state of California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage.[14] In August 2010, the District Court judge ruled in their clients' favor, finding Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional. On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the proponents of Proposition 8 did not have standing to challenge the ruling, allowing the District Court judgment to stand. Same-sex marriages resumed in California on June 28, 2013.
- Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP assisted the government in obtaining a $155 million settlement from Medco Health Solutions related to a qui tam complaint which alleged that Medco, "systematically and intentionally switched patients' prescriptions in an effort to increase the market share for certain pharmaceutical manufacturers, and thereby increased hidden rebate payments it received from pharmaceutical manufacturers."[15] In response to the settlement, Mr. Boies said, "I am very happy that lawyers from Boies, Schiller & Flexner were able to contribute to the litigation and settlement of this qui tam case, which will result in important changes in the way pharmacy managers do business by increasing their level of accountability to their patients. We are also very happy we could help the government recover the money it was erroneously billed by Medco, and that Medco agreed to execute a Corporate Integrity Agreement which will govern their conduct in the future."[16]
- On August 20, 2009 the Golden Gate Yacht Club announced that he had been retained in their ongoing dispute with Société Nautique de Genève regarding the 33rd America's Cup.[17]
- In March, 2010, David Boies joined the team of attorneys representing Jamie McCourt in her divorce from Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.[18]
- Boies was part of the legal team representing the National Football League in their antitrust litigation, Brady v. NFL.[19]
- Boies represented the National Basketball Players Association during the 2011 NBA lockout. He joined sides with Jeffrey Kessler, who opposed Boies as a representative for the players in the 2011 NFL lockout.[20]
- Boies was the lead counsel for Oracle Corporation in its lawsuit against Google on the use of Java programming language technology in the Android operating system. The case decided that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents.[21]
- In 2012, Boies represented three tobacco companies, Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Liggett Group LLC, in their appeal of a $2.5 million Tampa jury verdict in the death of smoker Charlotte Douglas.[22]
- In late 2012, Boies defended Gary Jackson, former president of Academi (previously known as BlackWater), in a federal prosecution which alleged he and his co-defendants illegally hid firearm purchases from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.[23]
- In December 2014, Boies, as Chief Counsel for Sony Pictures Entertainment, announced on a public affairs show on CNN that, notwithstanding threats by North Korea and a hacking incident against his client, Sony would be making the motion picture The Interview available for distribution to the public in some fashion, and that the release of the film was not cancelled, simply delayed. Boies also warned media outlets not to republish material stolen from Sony Pictures in the hacking incident, with little success.
- In 2015, Boies represented Harvey Weinstein in renegotiating Weinstein's employment contract.[24][25]
- In February 2016, Boies agreed to both sit on the board of directors and act as the attorney for troubled Silicon Valley startup Theranos. The controversial dual role was deemed difficult as he would have to represent both the company (as lawyer) and investors (as a director).[26]
- In 2017, Boies agreed to join the legal team for Lawrence Lessig's legal fight against winner-take-all Electoral College vote allocations in the states.[27]
