WilmerHale has been recognized by Law360 in the Competition category of its 2024 Practice Groups of the Year awards. This award highlights the exceptional work of WilmerHale's Competition group, which has achieved significant wins over the past year.
One of the standout successes for WilmerHale was securing a victory for Novelis in a long-standing dispute with rival Arconic. The team successfully defeated trade secrets claims and reduced the damages for contract claims to $1. Additionally, Novelis lodged antitrust counterclaims against Arconic, leading to a favorable settlement.
In the profile accompanying the recognition, Partner Hartmut Schneider, chair of WilmerHale's Competition Practice, highlighted the highly collaborative environment within the firm, stating, "That's really a terrific example of how practice groups in the firm cooperate with each other to achieve these successes."
Thomas Mueller noted that the Novelis case was compelling from a human-interest perspective because it involved Ford's switch to an all-aluminum F-150. "We were ensuring that Ford continued to have a couple of different suppliers for that very specialized aluminum, which is fun," Mueller said. "I also started my antitrust career as a general litigator, first on the plaintiff side, and this was a nice opportunity to be pressing the plaintiff side in an antitrust case."
WilmerHale's Competition group has also been involved in several other high-profile matters. The firm helped the University of Pennsylvania and other Ivy League schools defeat a proposed class action from student athletes challenging the athletic conference's long-standing policy of not offering athletic scholarships.
WilmerHale is also defending the University of Pennsylvania against an ongoing suit accusing elite schools of fixing financial aid offerings. "We've got a lot going on, and it's across a variety of industries and sectors with claims involving monopolization, as well as anticompetitive agreements," Mueller said.
WilmerHale has an expansive team working on antitrust matters, and the team is ever evolving to keep pace with the recent increase in the number of antitrust cases. "We really see the growth area over the last several years, and we expect it to continue, in the antitrust litigation space," Mueller said. "Plaintiffs, on all fronts, have been bringing more cases."
Schneider emphasized the importance of the firm's bolstered litigation capabilities, stating, "You just have to be prepared for litigation in ways that you didn't have to 10 or 15 years ago. That's why the litigation practice is important standing on its own, but it's also important because it provides firepower across the other parts of the practice."