Vineet Bhatia's Email & Phone

VINEET BHATIA, admitted to bar, 1991, New York and 1996, Texas. EDUCATION Rice University (B.A. 1987) Columbia University School of Law (J.D. 1990) HONORS & DISTINCTIONS Law Clerk to The Honorable Jack B. Weinstein, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York Notes and Comments Editor, Columbia Law Review, 1989-90 Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar (1987-90) PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS State Bar of Texas American Bar Association; Litigation Section, Antitrust Section New York State Bar Association New York City Bar Association Texas Bar Association Houston Bar Association Over the last 18 years, Mr. Bhatia has had tremendous success handling a wide variety of complicated, high-stakes commercial disputes for plaintiffs and defendants. Mr. Bhatia is experienced in antitrust litigation, contract disputes, intellectual property cases, insurance coverage litigation, first amendment litigation, product liability litigation and many other types of cases. He started his career at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York City in 1991 and joined Susman Godfrey in 1996. He became a partner in the firm in 1997 and has served on the firm's Executive Committee. Mr. Bhatia has a nationwide practice and has handled lawsuits in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. His cases, which have arisen under domestic and foreign law, have taken him to Brazil, England, Russia, and Venezuela. Mr. Bhatia has also handled a number of disputes arising out of corporate transactions, such as purchase price adjustment arbitrations and tax sharing agreement arbitrations. Mr. Bhatia has been hired to try lawsuits for a number of Fortune 500 companies, including ACE Limited, Lyondell Chemical Company, Philip Morris, Kmart, Western Resources, Genworth Financial, & KBR. He has also been hired by private equity firms and their portfolio companies, including Apollo and its portfolio company, Hexion Specialty Chemicals. In the last eight years, Mr. Bhatia has recovered over $600 million for plaintiffs by either settlement or judgment. In addition, Mr. Bhatia made a major contribution to one of the Top Ten Verdicts in the United States in 2005, when Steve Susman and he obtained a $140 million jury verdict (automatically trebled to $420 million) in an antitrust case against Tyco Healthcare Group. The case was tried in federal court in Los Angeles in March 2005. In March 2006, the Court upheld the jury's findings of antitrust liability but ordered a new trial on damages. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the liability verdict and the new damage award. In addition to winning money for plaintiffs, Mr. Bhatia successfully has defended clients facing multi-million and multi-billion dollar claims. Philip Morris placed Mr. Bhatia on a National Steering Committee to organize the defense of tobacco litigation brought by dozens of foreign countries, and he was also in charge of the cases brought in Texas. The cases in Texas and throughout the country were dismissed, and those dismissals were upheld on appeal. Philip Morris ended up paying nothing. Two of the world's largest insurersACE Property and Casualty Co. and Equitasalso hired Mr. Bhatia to handle coverage disputes involving hundreds of millions of dollars of exposure throughout the United States. Mr. Bhatia is currently involved in litigation relating to mortgage fraud and negligent underwriting arising out of the housing downturn. He represents mortgage insurers and financial guarantors in mulit-hundred million dollar disputes with banks and other mortgage originators. He is also active in bankruptcy matters, serving as conflicts counsel in the LyondellBasell bankruptcy. Last year, Mr. Bhatia served as Apollo and Hexion's Texas counsel in connection with its multi-billion dispute with Huntsman. In addition to his role in Texas, Mr. Bhatia teamed up with his old firm, Wachtell Lipton, to assist with the Delaware trial. At trial, Mr. Bhatia cross-examined two key Huntsman witnesses. These cross-examinations can be viewed by using the following links: Hankins / Hulme. If you are interested in contacting Mr. Bhatia's clients to find out about how he handles cases, call Joe Speelman at LyondellBasell, (713) 652-7402; John Suydam at Apollo, (212) 515-3237; Steve Rissman at Philip Morris, (917)-663-3310; Tom Kleissler at Genworth, (919) 846-4277; and Simon Wright at Equitas 011-44-207-342-2678. You can also speak to opposing counsel from some of Mr. Bhatia's trials such as Harry Reasoner at Vinson & Elkins (713) 758-2358; Steve Neal at Cooley Godward (650) 843-5182 or Ronald Redcay at Arnold & Porter, (213) 243-4002. The results in some of Mr. Bhatia's recent cases are described below. September 2009: Two weeks before arbitration proceedings were to begin, Genworth Mortgage resolved a dispute with a mortgage originator over $500 million in bulk mortgage insurance. Mr. Bhatia and his partner, Steve Morrissey and Lee Godfrey had been hired by Genworth in May 2008 after winning beauty contest among several major litigation boutiques. The settlement terms are confidential. August 2007: On the eve of trial, Genzyme Corporation agreed to pay $64 million to a certified class of shareholders that had held "tracking stock" in Genzyme's biosurgery division. Mr. Bhatia's firm was co-lead counsel in the case, and Mr. Bhatia had been selected as lead trial counsel. April 2006: Lyondell Chemical Company announced that it had settled a breach of contract claim brought on behalf of Lyondell-Citgo Refining L.P. against PDVSA, the Venezuela national oil company, for breaching a long-term crude supply contract. The settlement terms are confidential. The case was filed in the Southern District of New York and arose under New York and Venezuelan law. After defeating PDVSA's motion to dismiss the case under the "act of state" doctrine and completing extensive discovery in the United States and Venezuela, Mr. Bhatia obtained an adverse inference against PDVSA for refusing to produce documents, and, following that discovery sanction, filed a motion for summary judgment on behalf of the plaintiff. The case settled while that summary judgment motion was pending. SG partners, Lee Godfrey and Vineet Bhatia, were the lead lawyers for Lyondell in this matter. March 2005: A federal jury in Los Angeles California awarded Masimo Corporation, $420 million in damages (after trebling) against Tyco Health Care Group and its affiliate, Mallinckrodt, Inc. The claims had been brought under the federal antitrust laws based on Tyco's anticompetitive practices that prevented Masimo from selling its competing pulse oximetry products to hospitals located in the United States. The case was tried by Mr. Bhatia, Steve Susman, and two other partners in the firm's Los Angeles office. Mr. Bhatia selected the jury and presented and cross-examined the majority of witnesses at trial. March 2005: A federal district court in San Antonio dismissed all claims by 53 plaintiffs suing ConocoPhillips and Rio Grande Resources, alleging that defendants' uranium mining and milling operations caused cancer and other medical ailments. Plaintiffs sought damages in excess of $50 million plus punitive damages; they recovered nothing. December 2003: Several large financial institutions paid more than $100 million to settle consolidated class actions brought in Los Angeles on behalf injured people whose reserves for future medical care and living expenses had been looted from trust funds. The suit was filed after the trustee stopped paying disbursements of settlement proceeds to approximately 250 seriously injured people and wrongful death claimants. The plaintiffs recovered 100% of their losses. Mr. Bhatia worked extensively on this case with co-lead class counsel, Marc M. Seltzer, in Susman Godfrey's Los Angeles office. August 2002: An arbitrator rendered an arbitration decision in favor of our client, Lyondell Chemical Company, against Atlantic Richfield Company. The arbitration involved the breach of a long-term agreement to supply MTBE. After the arbitration decision, the parties agreed that ARCO should pay Lyondell $21.5 million. Mr. Bhatia served as lead counsel in this case, and the result was featured in an article in the National Law Journal on the top plaintiffs firms in the United States. June 2002: Mr. Bhatia concluded two cases arising out of ACE Limited's acquisition of Cigna Corporationa tax sharing agreement arbitration and a lawsuit filed in New York. Mr. Bhatia represented ACE in both cases. The settlement agreement in the case is confidential. November 2000: Mr. Bhatia served as lead counsel for Western Resources in a purchase price adjustment arbitration and related litigation against Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The arbitration and related case involved Western Resources's purchase of Westinghouse's home-monitored security business in December 1996. The terms of the settlement were confidential, although Western Resources disclosed, as required by the SEC, that it received $37.5 million to resolve all the claims. April 2000: After an extensive evidentiary hearing, a state judge in Texas dismissed a $15 billion lawsuit against Unocal brought by Bridas Corporation, an Argentine oil & gas company. Mr. Bhatia worked on the case with partners Randy Wilson and Eric Mayer. The case was dismissed based on choice of law and summary judgment briefing prepared by Mr. Bhatia. The ruling was upheld on appeal by the Court of Appeals, and Bridas recovered nothing on its claims.