Susman Godfrey has once again been named a ‘Class Action Group Of The Year’ by Law360 in recognition of its successful prosecution of high-profile class action matters in courts across the United States, in which it has helped to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in recoveries for the classes represented by the firm.
Susman Godfrey’s achievements in litigating complex — and markedly diverse — class actions secured its place on this prestigious list. To this point, Los Angeles Partner Marc Seltzer told Law360, “We pride ourselves on being trial lawyers who can take on any kind of case. Our attorneys work on a wide variety of cases, not just class actions, representing both plaintiffs and defendants.” The firm’s accomplishments this year led to over $1 billion in settlements for plaintiffs including automotive component part purchasers, rock stars, animators, music copyright for owners, egg purchasers and “over-the-counter” financial instrument investors.
Among these class actions is the exceptionally complex in In re: Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, where so far over $1 billion in partial settlements have been obtained for the end payor plaintiff classes, believed to be the largest recovery to date in any indirect purchaser antitrust case. The firm also represented Flo & Eddie, the founding members of The Turtles rock group, and other artists with pre-1972 recordings who struck a settlement with Sirius XM valued at $62 million in Flo & Eddie Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio Inc.; “over the counter” financial instrument investors who this year settled with Citibank for $130 million in the In re: Libor-Based Financial Instruments Antitrust Litigation; and a class of animators and visual effects employees who sued several of Hollywood’s biggest movie studios over claims the studios had a “gentleman’s agreement” not to poach each other’s employees or get into bidding wars to hire them, settling with the defendant studios for over $168 million.
Echoing Seltzer’s sentiment, Partner Kalpana Srinivasan speaks of the firm’s strategy when taking on cases, saying, “how we handle the demands of more complicated and complex litigation changes…that all evolves over time, but at the end of the day understanding the case’s critical facts and legal issues don’t change.”
Partner Steven Sklaver played a significant role in several of the class actions noted by Law360. Of the entertainment-industry focused class actions, Sklaver addressed the combination of traditional copyright law, changing technology, and high-stakes litigation, stating: “We are talking about novel technology both in the Sirius XM and Spotify [litigation] applied to well-founded, we think, intellectual property law, so it is very interesting to get involved in litigation at the intersection of both the old and new.”
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