Susman Godfrey won a major victory in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for its client, Vitol Inc., on March 18 when the appellate court unanimously affirmed a district court’s dismissal of all claims brought against Vitol and other energy trading firms by the PDVSA US Litigation Trust, a New York-based entity that claimed to hold a valid assignment of claims from PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.
The Eleventh Circuit upheld the district court’s 2019 ruling that the Trust lacked standing to bring the case, as its purported assignment of claims from PDVSA violated New York’s champerty statute. Neal Manne, Alex Kaplan, Michael Gervais, and Michael Kelso represented Vitol in the district court and on appeal.
