First up this week is the team led by Kathryn “Lee” Boyd of Hecht Partners and Michael Hausfeld of Hausfeld who represent refugees who claim French bank BNP Paribus aided and abetted the government of Sudan in committing acts of genocide between 1997 and 2011. After the suit survived the bank’s motion for summary judgment last month, Senior U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein last week certified a class estimated to be more than 23,000 asylees and refugees in the U.S. who lived in Sudan or South Sudan at the time. As previously noted, the Hecht Partners team also includes Kristen Nelson, Mike Eggenberger, Theo Bruening and paralegal Nathan Hakimpour. The Hausfeld team includes Scott Gilmore, Amanda Lee-DasGupta, Claire Rosset, Mary Sameera Van Houten Harper and senior paralegal Jim Mitchell.
Brad Karp, Kannon Shanmugam, Lynn Bayard and their team at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison got a win for the NFL as the Nevada Supreme Court this week reversed a decision denying arbitration in a lawsuit brought by former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden. Gruden claimed the league used leaked racist, sexist and homophobic emails to “publicly sabotage” his career. In a 2-1 decision, the Nevada Supreme Court turned back Gruden’s argument that the arbitration clause in the NFL Constitution, which grants the commissioner “full, complete, and final jurisdiction” over disputes involving “conduct detrimental to the best interests of the League or professional football,” was unconscionable. “As a former Super Bowl Champion coach and long-time media personality signing the most lucrative NFL coaching contract in history, while being represented by an elite agent, Gruden was the very definition of a sophisticated party,” the majority wrote. Shanmugam argued the case before the Nevada Supreme Court. The Paul Weiss team also included associates Will Marks, Tiana Voegelin, James Durling, Yishai Schwartz, Kerissa Barron and Sarah Lamsifer, with local counsel Mitchell Langberg and Maximilien Fetaz of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
