Legal News

$20 Million Case Against Morgan Lewis Goes to Jury

By Ashby Jones

There’s a reason that most U.S. law schools teach civil procedure in the first semester of first year: Because, as lawyers in Philadelphia are finding out this week, it matters! After more than two weeks of testimony and years of prior litigation, a $20 million case between Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and a former client, water filtration company Purolite, could boil down to that old civ pro subject: statute of limitations. Here’s the story, from the Philadelphia Intelligencer.

At issue in this case is whether the claim against Morgan Lewis was filed within the four-year statute of limitations.

Dry as that may seem, the backstory is a good one. It concerns the alleged advice given in 1993 to Purolite by Morgan Lewis to continue to sell its products to Cuban companies despite the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Both sides have alleged that Morgan Lewis’s original advice in 1993 was Purolite to stop all sales to Cuba. But according to the plaintiffs, after getting inquiries from Purolite salespeople overseas, Morgan Lewis allegedly advised Purolite that it could continue to sell to Cuba from foreign offices after making sure that there was no U.S. involvement with those sales.

So Purolite sold to Cuba from its foreign offices. In 1999, Purolite’s Pennsylvania-based owners, brothers Don and Stefan Brodie, were indicted in 1999 for violating the Trading With the Enemy Act and ultimately pled guilty to a lesser charge.

Provided they can get past the statute of limitations question, the jury will consider whether Morgan Lewis breached its contractual obligations to Purolite.

“If there’s one thing in this case that’s clear … it’s if the Brodies and Purolite stopped all sales to Cuba … then all of the events you’ve been hearing about for the past 2 1/2 weeks never would have taken place,” the Brodies’ lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, recently told the jury.

The lawyer for Morgan Lewis, William O’Brien told the jury that the Brodies ignored Morgan Lewis’s advice to avoid any U.S. involvement in sales to Cuba. “They traded with Cuba because they were making a lot of money,” O’Brien said. “They didn’t like to be told what to do.”

Update: Well that didn’t take long! Word in today that the jury rendered a unanimous defense verdict earlier today. Click here for the latest Intelligencer update.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 30, 2008 (boomark / email).