Announcements, sparingly

The firm has named partner Priya Raghavan co-chair of its Securities Litigation & Enforcement practice, alongside founding partner Eleanor Hayes. Raghavan, an engineer before she was a lawyer, leads the firm's defense of technology issuers and its disclosure-counseling work for late-stage private companies.

“Priya has quietly become the lawyer boards ask for when the alleged fraud lives in the technical details,” Hayes said. “This makes formal what our clients already knew.”

A federal jury returned a complete defense verdict for the firm's client, a specialty-chemicals manufacturer, rejecting fraud and breach-of-contract claims seeking $1.2 billion arising from a terminated supply agreement. The jury deliberated for less than four hours after a three-week trial.

Marcus Westbrook led the trial team, with Alexander Reyes examining two of the defense's principal witnesses. “The verdict reflects what the documents showed from the first day of discovery,” Westbrook said. “We prepared this case to be tried, and the jury did the rest.”

An arbitral tribunal has awarded the full disputed earn-out, plus pre-award interest, to the founders of a medical-device company the firm represented against their acquirer. The acquirer had re-characterized revenue in a way that erased a milestone payment.

Jonathan Marsh led the team, with Thomas Ellison building the revenue model the tribunal adopted. “The contract said what it said,” Marsh said. “Our job was to make the arithmetic easy to follow.”

After thirteen years in Midtown, Westbrook & Hayes has moved to One Whitehall Landing in Lower Manhattan, closer to the courthouses where most of its cases are tried. The new floor includes a dedicated trial war room and space for witness preparation.

“We designed the office around the one thing we do,” Eleanor Hayes said. “Everything on this floor exists to get a case ready for a courtroom.”