November 5, 2010 1:05 PM

Citi (and Ted Wells) Trump Terra Firma (and David Boies) at EMI Trial

Posted by Brian Baxter

After only four hours of deliberations on Thursday, a federal jury in Manhattan found that Citigroup did not trick British private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners into buying EMI Music Publishing for $6.3 billion in 2007.

Winning the battle of litigation titans was Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner Theodore Wells, Jr., who was named our Litigator of the Week by The Am Law Litigation Daily for his efforts representing Citi against Terra Firma and its top lawyer, David Boies of Boies, Schiller & Flexner (who was recently profiled in Forbes).

The eight-person jury, which was reshuffled a bit during the week, sided with Citi in the dispute that ended at the district level with Terra Firma getting none of the $8.3 billion it had sought for the bank's alleged manipulation of a 2007 auction for New York-based EMI.

After tossing out punitive damages from Terra Firma's suit against Citi on Monday, federal district court judge Jed Rakoff called the case "a cat fight between two rich companies."

As noted by the Litigation Daily, the end was sweet vindication for Wells. He lost a case to Boies last year--the first one that pitted the two against one another--when Boies successfully defended Hank Greenberg's Starr International against claims by Wells client AIG. That trial also was presided over by Rakoff.

 

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