“The $2.6 billion deal to lease San Juan’s Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport to a private consortium is being watched by bankers and industry officials keen to import a business model that is widely used in Europe and Asia. —The Wall Street Journal

"There was almost uniform agreement that the biggest environmental victory in Southern California was won by Pillsbury."
—Los Angeles Daily Journal

"Plaintiffs’ proposed interpretation…[would] greatly expand indenture trustees’ recognized administrative duties far beyond anything found in
the contract."
—New York Court of Appeals opinion, echoing the points raised by Pillsbury as amicus in Racepoint Partners

"[C]ause for suspension or revocation of the Respondent's license does not exist…in that Anheuser-Busch did not, directly or indirectly, provide free malt beverage products during a public event."
—Administrative law judge's order

"Rules governing lawyer advertising in New York that were passed in February 2007 cannot be enforced because they violate the First Amendment right to free speech, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled today."
—Press release by Public Citizen, a nonpartisan advocacy organization

"While a student’s expectation of privacy at school is diminished, it is not extinguished."
—Unanimous appellate opinion in Brown, et al. v. Shasta Union High School District, et al.

"The promotion and protection of human rights is likely to be crucial in the months leading up to the 2011 general elections in Cameroon. A number of the human rights violations documented in this report have been linked to a government strategy of stifling criticism and effective opposition."
—From the Amnesty International report titled “Cameroon: Impunity underpins persistent abuse”

"In a side-by-side comparison…the overall effect of this streamlined theme makes the FuBar tools significantly different from Richardson’s design."
—U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

"Defendant's counsel could not have achieved a better result for their client."
—U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in his award of attorneys' fees to Pillsbury's client Atlas Copco

"Pillsbury delivered an excellent result for us in this case. The team did a superior job researching and briefing numerous complex legal issues and their attention to detail, superb witness preparation and overall resolve in this protracted litigation made the difference."
—Matthew A. Sokol, Chemtura's Associate General Counsel

“After a trial, the Court of Chancery ruled substantially in favor of CA…. We find no merit to Ingres’s appeal and affirm….”
—Opinion from the Delaware Supreme Court

"Mr. Solow has proposed building a 32-story and a 47-story tower, with what will probably be a five-story school. Trees would line the walkways leading from First Avenue to Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and the river."
—The New York Times, on the plans for the site owned by Pillsbury's client

"Defendant is correct that there is no triable issue regarding the validity of this lien…."
—From the judge’s order granting summary judgment to Pillsbury's client

"If we were to hold that this state could impose restrictions on the interstate wholesale natural gas market by way of its antitrust laws, we would imply that every other state could do so as well."
—Tennessee Supreme Court ruling in Leggett, et al. v. Duke Energy, et al.

"A federal judge has given the heave-ho to an antitrust suit brought by bankrupt magazine wholesaler Anderson News LLC against a host of single-issue magazine publishers including…American Media, Inc."
—Bankruptcy Law360

"I am absolutely elated to see Congoleum's plan confirmed at last. It has been a long, difficult journey out of the complicated asbestos and insurance litigation we faced nearly nine years ago. I could not be happier about putting this chapter of our history behind us."
—Roger S. Marcus, Chairman of the Board

"Bankrupt Tronox Inc.'s reorganization plan has been deemed a winning restructuring formula by a New York judge."
—The Daily Deal

"Richmond is interfering with interstate commerce by exposing Chevron to the possibility of being taxed more than once by othercities or states for the same business activity."
—The San Francisco Chronicle, summarizing the court’s decision

"[T]his decision may provide refund opportunities for taxpayers that …would not have qualified for the unreasonable exception under the Director’s narrow interpretation."
—An analysis of Pillsbury’s victory by one of the Big Four accounting firms

“Victory…is regarded by attorneys who represent persons holding claims against the so-called ‘earthquake’ companies as of far-reaching importance to the city.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 1908

“[W]e are persuaded by Pacific Bell’s argument that the cause of action as framed is defective because the unfair competition law does not make available any remedy [the plaintiff] sought in the third amended complaint.”

—California Court of Appeal in Advanced Scientific Applications v. Pacific Bell Telephone Co.

“We came, we saw, we conquered, with the very professional support by Pillsbury.”

—Håkan Osvald, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Atlas Copco

“CA Inc., a maker of software for mainframe computers, won a Delaware judge’s ruling that it doesn’t have to pay as much as $60 million in damages to business partner Ingres Corp.”

—Bloomberg News

“I have never before seen such a surgically complete dissection of a complaint as achieved by you and your team.”

—Capitol Bancorp chairman Joseph D. Reid, a veteran litigator, in a letter congratulating Pillsbury attorneys on their victory

“Because plaintiffs bear the burden of proving breach, and because there is no evidence of breach, Chevron is entitled to summary judgment. In addition, even if plaintiffs could show a duty and breach, the nondisclosure claim fails for lack of causation.”

—U.S. District Court Order

“As the Administrator and Committee’s interpretation of the Plan was legally correct, no abuse of discretion occurred.”

—Fifth Circuit opinion in Stone v. Unocal Termination Allowance Plan

“[Petitioners] do not provide information to support their claims that cultural resources, water quality, and wildlife will be harmed by [Cogema’s] mining activities.”

—Memorandum and Order of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board

“This case exemplifies everything that is wrong with Guantanamo. He’s a completely innocent man and they torture him into confessing, right out of the North Korean and communist Chinese play book.”

—The Associated Press, quoting Pillsbury partner David Cynamon

“The failure to implement the contractual methodology constituted, as the trial court found, a breach of contract. But the record does not support the trial court’s finding that the breach caused no damages ….”

—Appellate opinion reversal, resulting in a victory for Health Net of California, and setting up potential future recoveries by Health Net and other health plans

“This was an extreme policy, far beyond what California law allows, and we are pleased that the court recognized this.”

—The Sacramento Bee, quoting Pillsbury partner Tom Loran

“A Cobb County judge has dismissed a Smyrna gun seller’s lawsuit that was brought against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.”

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“The case … is believed to be the first successful asbestos verdict against that type of defendant.”

—Plaintiffs attorneys’ press release, touting the victory, before it was overturned through Pillsbury’s successful efforts

“The legal case, argued by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, follows favorable rulings [secured by Pillsbury] against opposing environmental groups in three other federal courts.”

—The Sacramento Bee

“The Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the company it hired to build a new power plant in the southeastern county are locked in a high-stakes legal dispute over the project’s delay.”

—The Sacramento Bee

“Where do new tools come from?
Angry workmen and this R&D squad.”

—Popular Science, in a profile of The Stanley Works’ innovation team behind the FuBar^®, winner of the magazine’s “Best of What’s New” Award

“This is the third legal proceeding in which Lite-On seeks to avoid paying any royalties for its manufacture and sale of DVD drives.”

—Pillsbury’s brief in support of Toshiba’s first motion in limine

“The area around New Carrollton Station has long been considered an ideal candidate for redevelopment because it serves as a commuter hub and a gateway to Washington for travelers coming from the north and east.”

—The Washington Post

“It’s tough to think of a company that has done as much to meet our standards for becoming a commercial airline.”

—U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters

The Opportunity
Highly profitable companies have long used tax credit investments as a tool to reduce tax liability. For one Fortune 100 technology company, however, these investment opportunities were often too small to move the needle, generated low yields, or required too much administration to justify the return. But as banks, the traditional buyers of tax credits, began reporting quarterly losses in 2008, the tax credit market responded in several ways: expected returns rose, fund-of-fund offerings increased the size of individual investments, and tax credit syndicators began offering AA-rated guaranteed returns as inducements to buyers.

The Opportunity
A Chinese real estate investment group was considering its first investment in the U.S. commercial real estate market. It identified a 5,000-unit apartment project in Texas and Maryland that satisfied its investment parameters, but the project was in the midst of the prior owners’ complex Chapter 11 proceeding—the borrowers’ equity had been wiped out, the assets were encumbered by multiple layers of CMBS debt, and the appointed Special Servicer was actively scrutinizing any proposed restructuring transaction.

The Challenge
Before the turmoil in the credit markets, affordable housing developers that generated tax credits could easily sell them to investors looking to purchase tax offsets. But the recession has meant less profit to offset and a corresponding decrease in demand for tax credits. As tax credit prices have plummeted, nearly 1,000 affordable housing projects across the U.S. have stalled for lack of funding.

The Opportunity
San Francisco has a reputation as one of the most difficult markets for real estate development anywhere in the United States. San Francisco-based Martin Building Company (MBC) worked for 8 years to gain land use approvals on two development projects representing a total of approximately 275 market rate and low-income rental units located in the city’s burgeoning South Beach and Central Waterfront neighborhoods.

“Pillsbury’s knowledge of recent legal developments and diligence in applying them resulted in novel and important rulings that significantly reduced Dynegy’s exposure in this important matter.”

—Jason B. Kinzel, Corporate Counsel, Dynegy Inc.

“Defendants were ably represented by very skilled and capable counsel … with well-deserved and nationwide reputations for vigorous advocacy in the defense of complex federal securities litigation.”

—Plaintiffs attorneys’ declaration, In re Exodus Communications, Inc., September 9, 2008

“Pillsbury ... was the first to warn operators late last year that the industry was vulnerable to facing a number of class-action lawsuits stemming from FACTA violations.”

—Nation’s Restaurant News, September 15, 2007

“Clients are full of praise for the ‘team work and triple-A results’ of this firm, as well as the lawyers’ communication skills: ‘They always ask how they can do better.’”

—Chambers USA 2007, on its ranking of Pillsbury’s practice in commercial litigation

“Congratulations again on a terrific result and especially on the outstanding brief that caused it.”

—Attorney for the SDL directors’ insurance company, June 23, 2008

“If that finding is left to stand, it would have a chilling effect on the financial markets and would eliminate a significant means by which banks, financial institutions and corporations diversify their credit risk.”

—amicus brief in support of Société Générale, May 8, 2006, International Swaps and Derivatives Association

“The Pillsbury litigation team maintained steady focus on our objectives, and were efficient in executing our strategies to keep the transaction moving to closure without delay.”

—Joseph J. Catalano, Senior Vice President and Chief Litigation Counsel, Union Bank

“Jean Coutu’s senior vice-president ... was peppered with questions from irate fixed-income investors, who expressed doubt Jean Coutu could avoid triggering a change-of-control measure forcing it to buy back the debt at a 1% premium.”

—:Financial Post, August 26, 2006

“Atheros has relied on Pillsbury since the company was founded, and they have proven time and again that they understand our business and our technology. We tell them where we want to go, and they help us get there.”

—Adam H. Tachner, Vice President and General Counsel, Atheros Communications

The next big opportunity in online advertising is actually quite small: the widget. Widgets are small web applications that add dynamic content code to web pages like a user’s social networking profile or personal blog. Widgets’ key advantages over traditional banner advertising are their interactivity and the fact that users choose to host their content—a highly compelling solution for linking advertisers to customers. In 2004, Alex Bard joined three friends to found Goowy Media. Working on a tight budget, their first move was to develop a set of user-friendly web tools for managing email, contacts and calendars. The Goowy Webtop attracted the interest of Mark Cuban, who led the company’s first (and only) venture round. Maintaining no-frills discipline, the company’s momentum catapulted upward as it shifted focus to developing a novice-user widget platform and the backend management and analytics tools that support dynamic advertising.

“For once, economic development can be advanced in unison with environmental protection. We appreciate the [U.S. district] court’s judgment on our project.”

—Bill Cramer, Vice Chairman of the Panama City-Bay County Airport Authority, MarketWatch, October 30, 2008

Pillsbury’s nationally ranked Aviation practice was instrumental in helping two airlines take flight in 2008. After the Department of Transportation ruled that California-based Virgin America was improperly controlled by non-U.S. citizens affiliated with Sir Richard Branson and the UK’s Virgin Group, Pillsbury attorneys worked around the clock for two months to help the company file a revised application addressing all of the DOT’s concerns. In a rare reversal, the DOT ruled in favor of Virgin America and officially designed it as a U.S. commercial airline just six months after its original application was turned down.

“The perchlorate plume polluting the Rialto-Colton Groundwater Basin is believed to be about six miles long, and to spread at a rate of about three feet per day, according to city officials. ”

—The Riverside Press-Enterprise, March 17, 2008

A Complex Dispute
Luminant’s highly complex dispute over enriched uranium fuel involved multiple transactions, the bankruptcy of a key player, and companies based in five countries on three continents.

The Project
Three countries, multiple bankruptcies, the absence of an EPC contractor, a complicated fuel supply plan, a credit market meltdown, two lawsuits on the eve of closing... and a deal that was the first of its kind. These were just some of the challenges Pillsbury’s client, Mitsui, faced in the C$650 million development and financing of the Greenfield Energy Centre, the largest project developed under Ontario, Canada’s new Clean Energy Program, and the largest power generating project financed in North America in 2007.

An Ambitious Project
In the wake of the increased attention being paid to energy security and supply, one of the nation’s fundamental challenges is how to link renewable energy sources to the locations where their output is consumed. In the western U.S., where such distances can be measured in the hundreds and thousands of miles, Pillsbury client PacifiCorp aims to bridge the gap.

The Challenge
As one of the largest biodiesel producers in the U.S., Renewable Energy Group (REG) is transforming today’s fragmented biodiesel market into tomorrow’s viable alternative to fossil fuels. REG’s success can be attributed, in part, to a corporate structure that gives each of its core business units—production facility construction and management, marketing and distribution, and investments— the financial and operational flexibility to respond independently to rapidly changing market conditions.

The Opportunity
The Los Angeles Unified School District serves 694,288 students, and employs 45,473 teachers and 38,494 staff—making it the second-largest school district in the U.S. and the second-largest employer in Los Angeles County. After L.A. residents passed a $7 billion school bond initiative in November 2008, the District had funding to launch an extensive construction and modernization program—an opportunity to not only upgrade their schools and facilities but also provide much-needed economic stimulus throughout the county.

PeopleSupport’s success story is one of booms and busts and well-timed shifts in strategy. The company started out as an outsourced call center to first-generation internet ventures. Pillsbury worked with the high-growth startup through formation and two rounds of venture financing before its customer base began to suffer the effects of the post-boom contraction. Struggling to stay afloat, the company’s management recognized three factors that would allow them to not just weather the bust, but emerge a stronger company: the commercialization of IP telephony; excess undersea fiber optic capacity; and the labor cost arbitrage between high-turnover U.S. call center workers and low-turnover, better-educated overseas workers. And indeed by shifting call center operations to the Philippines and adopting IP telephony, the company entered a new period of growth that culminated in a successful IPO in 2004.

“A costly, 20-month saga of futility and frustration came to a formal close Wednesday when the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that it had settled a dispute with the contractor that installed its payroll system …”

“The ruling marks yet another victory for Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s energy practice, which has chalked up two other big wins in the spent-fuel disposal realm in the last month alone.”

—Energy Law360, October 19, 2007

“After two years of uncertainty, the Queen Mary can once again become a world-class tourist destination.”

—Pillsbury partner quoted in Bankruptcy Law360, November 9, 2007

“Even holders of pre-bankruptcy Solutia’s common shares will make a recovery, despite repeated warnings by the company that those shares would be worthless. ... Those who had been set to get nothing could wind up owning a combined 18 percent of a growing corporation.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 27, 2007

“Our Pillsbury attorneys assessed the challenge Fellowes was facing from a Chinese competitor’s patent lawsuit and were confident that we could turn the tables and win in court. And they did exactly that.”

—Steve Carson, General Counsel of Fellowes, Inc.

“The appeals court said the U.S. International Trade Commission had overstepped its bounds when it issued the ban against handset makers … ”

—PC World, October 14, 2008

“We are very pleased with the court’s ruling and are moving forward aggressively to build sufficient product inventories to support the increased demand for our vascular sheath product lines.”

—Dr. Paul Kurth, inventor and President of Pressure Products, Inc., August 10, 2008

The Challenge
Historically, government funding for carbon sequestration and capture projects has primarily supported traditional geologic methods, in which carbon emissions are captured and stored underground. California-based startup Ternion Bio Industries (Ternion Bio) has developed an innovative technology that uses algae to recycle CO₂ into beneficial products, through its proprietary Photo BioReactor system. This emerging technology provides gas-emitting facilities—such as coal-burning plants, ethanol plants, petroleum refineries and manufacturing plants—a cost-effective alternative to geologic carbon capture and sequestration. Funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) would help the company advance its technology, but as an emerging growth company, competing for that funding had proven difficult.

“Pillsbury’s guidance enabled us to far surpass the high standards that apply to an independent board-level investigation. Pillsbury was expert, thorough, responsive and instilled confidence throughout.”

—Ken Goldman, Juniper Networks Audit Committee Chairman

“Companies that turned over confidential documents to the government during the U.S. Justice Department’s Thompson Memo era shouldn’t have to share that information with plaintiffs’ attorneys, a state appeal court ruled Wednesday.”

WebEx founders Subrah Iyar and Min Zhu had an elegant idea: develop an on-demand application that replaced cumbersome and proprietary videoconferencing equipment with a web browser and a telephone. They planned to tap into the best engineering talent in Silicon Valley and Shanghai, and beat the competition to the most attractive global markets by establishing a local sales presence early on.