Halley Josephs is an accomplished trial lawyer and trusted adviser who represents clients in complex business disputes and high-stakes litigation. Her experience covers a wide range of practice areas, such as breach of contract, consumer protection, intellectual property, and False Claims Act litigation. She regularly advocates for clients before state and federal courts around the country, including in California, New York, the District of Columbia, Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Beyond her active trial court practice, she has argued appeals in the Third and Ninth Circuits.

Ms. Josephs’ recent notable representations include:

• Defending Uber Technologies, Inc. in the “Tech Trial of the Century,” in which Waymo (the self-driving car subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.) claimed more than $2 billion in damages for alleged trade secret theft. Susman Godfrey was hired by Uber only months before the jury trial in the Northern District of California was scheduled to begin. Susman Godfrey’s team successfully argued for the exclusion of Waymo’s expert damages opinions, and the case settled during the first week of trial.
• Representing universal life insurance policyholders in In re AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company Litigation, a breach of contract and consumer protection class action lawsuit pending in the Southern District of New York that challenges increases to cost-of-insurance charges for certain flexible-premium life insurance policies covering elderly insureds. In 2020, Ms. Josephs and her team secured class certification of breach-of-contract claims and claims under New York General Business Law § 349 and New York Insurance Law § 4226.
• Representing a major sports agency in a confidential arbitration concerning the departure of agents to a competing agency.
• Arguing and winning an appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Plavin v. Group Health Inc., where Ms. Josephs represents a retired NYPD officer, the named plaintiff for a putative class of hundreds of thousands of NYC employees and retirees, alleging the employees’ health insurer violated New York’s consumer protection laws. You can listen to her oral argument here and read the Court’s opinion here.
• Representing a qui tam whistleblower in ongoing False Claims Act litigation against Walgreens and its affiliates concerning their failure to pass on “usual and customary” generic prescription drug prices to Medicaid and Medicare Part D programs. Ms. Josephs successfully opposed multiple motions to dismiss in this case in the Northern District of Oklahoma, enabling her client to proceed to discovery on his claims. Read about the district court’s opinion denying defendants’ motions to dismiss here.
• Representing an international aviation financing and leasing company in actions seeking to recover more than $40 million in damages from various lessees. Ms. Josephs led mediations which resulted in confidential settlements in several of the actions.

Ms. Josephs also dedicates a significant portion of her docket to pro bono matters. She currently represents SAJE, ACCE Action, and CES, tenant advocacy groups, as intervenors to help defend the constitutionality of eviction moratoria enacted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic by the City of Los Angeles and County of San Diego.  In February 2022, Ms. Josephs argued an appeal before the Ninth Circuit on behalf of ACCE Action, urging the court to affirm the denial of a preliminary injunction targeting the County of San Diego’s expired eviction ordinance.  Click here to watch her argument. The Daily Journal and Law360 profiled Josephs and her colleagues for their work in this area.

Ms. Josephs joined Susman Godfrey after clerking for Judge Patty Shwartz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Judge Anita B. Brody of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with distinction from the University of Virginia.