Experience Archive

HSG represents Visa in multi-district class action antitrust litigation filed on behalf of all U.S. merchants, as well as in opt-out cases brought by the world’s largest retailers—including Target, Macy’s, and 7-Eleven—relating to network rules at the heart of the Visa system. In September 2018, HSG helped Visa reach a historic $6.26 billion settlement with one of the putative classes of merchants—the largest known settlement of a private antitrust case in the 120-year history of the Sherman Act. On March 21, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of New York upheld the class-action settlement with more than 12 million retailers.

HSG represented Valassis, a MacAndrews & Forbes company, as plaintiff in litigation against News Corp. and its subsidiaries alleging federal and state antitrust violations, unfair competition, and tortious interference seeking more than $600 million in damages. Valassis defeated summary judgment and then reached a confidential settlement during jury deliberations following a nearly three-week jury trial in the Southern District of New York in July 2021.

HSG represents AIMCo, an investment fund owned by a foreign sovereign, and Wells Fargo, as a securities intermediary, in innovative, high nine-figure multi-district litigation against insurance carriers alleged to have improperly increased insureds’ premiums on “universal life” insurance policies. HSG has secured several important early wins in these high-profile cases, ensuring that the defendants’ alleged abuses will be adjudicated on the merits. Most recently, in litigation against AXA, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the defendant’s summary judgment and Daubert motions, allowing AIMCo’s claims for breach of contract, statutory fraud, and common law fraud to proceed.

HSG represented a primary insurance carrier and an excess carrier in a successful $286 million appeal in New York’s First Department in an insurance coverage dispute arising out of the SEC’s late-trading and market-timing investigation of Bear Stearns in the mid-2000s. HSG obtained a reversal of the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the successors of Bear Sterns, convincing the court to hold that, as a matter of law, $140 million in SEC disgorgement imposed on Bear Stearns was an uninsured penalty.

A pioneer in the area, HSG has acted as coordinating counsel to a government-sponsored entity on a portfolio of $1.5 billion in putback claims and secured hundreds of millions of dollars for trustees in putback litigations. HSG was appointed plaintiffs’ liaison counsel for dozens of coordinated putback cases pending in New York state court, and currently serves as the trustee’s litigation counsel in several of them. In the first of the coordinated cases to reach the summary judgment stage, HSG attorneys successfully opposed the defendant’s motion to limit the scope of its liability and damages, enabling the case to proceed to trial on all allegedly breaching loans.

HSG represented Montreux Partners, L.P. in complex litigation over Argentina’s default on $90 billion in bond payments. Montreux, which purchased discounted bonds following the country’s default, received a favorable ruling from the Second Circuit that lifted an injunction and allowed Argentina to pay out on profitable settlements with Montreux.

HSG represented PetSmart in a dispute with lenders concerning more than $8 billion in debt obligations—litigation at the cutting-edge of a broader industry-wide fight regarding corporate debtors’ rights.