Andrea E. Neuman

Andrea E. Neuman is a partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  Ms. Neuman is Co-Chair of the Firm’s Transnational Litigation and Foreign Judgments Practice Group.  She is a member of the Environmental Litigation and Mass Tort and Class Action Practice Groups. 

Ms. Neuman is trial counsel for multinational corporations in complex international litigation.  She is trial and strategic counsel for clients in an array of industries, including oil and gas, food and agriculture, aerospace, technology, accounting, real estate, and financial services.  She has also served as trial counsel for state and local governments.  Ms. Neuman has obtained both defense and multimillion-dollar plaintiff judgments for the Firm’s clients. 

Ms. Neuman has substantial experience trying high-stakes cases, including securing the dismissal of two toxic tort cases against Dole Foods because of fraud on the court by plaintiffs and their counsel, and securing the denial of the enforcement of a $98 million Nicaragua judgment against Dole in federal District Court in Florida.  The Dole victories were featured as the cover story in the October 2009 issues of California Lawyer and Corporate Counsel, and received widespread newspaper coverage, including a front-page feature story in the Wall Street Journal.  The victories led Ms. Neuman and the Firm to be named “2010 Litigation Department of the Year” by The American Lawyer, in which it stated, “Neuman coaxed one plaintiff to admit that he had been trained to testify ‘like a parrot,’ and she found others so frightened of retribution for testifying that they nearly collapsed during depositions.”

Ms. Neuman has received numerous other accolades.  In 2010, she was named to the Daily Journal’s annual list of California’s Top 100 lawyers and was a recipient of the California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) Awards by California Lawyer magazine.  She was also selected to The Recorder 2009 Attorneys of the Year and by the Daily Journal as a Top Female Litigator in the State of California multiple times.

Ms. Neuman received her Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia, and dual degrees from the University’s McIntire School of Commerce with high distinction.

Ms. Neuman has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Orange County Child Abuse Prevention Center and on the Board of the United Cerebral Palsy of Orange County.  She is a member of the Orange County United Way’s Alexis de Tocqueville Society and the Women’s Philanthropic Fund.  In 2009 and 2008, Ms. Neuman served as Co-Chair of BUZZ:  An Executive Women’s Think Tank.

Ms. Neuman is admitted to practice in the States of New York and California.

Representative Matters

• Chevron v. Donziger, et. al., S.D.N.Y.; Aguinda v. Chevron, Lago Agrio, Ecuador; Chevron v. Republic of Ecuador, Hague:  Represents Chevron internationally in litigation arising out of an environmental case brought in Ecuador in 2003.  The Ecuador litigation has been marred by rampant fraud and, as a result, the $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron out of Ecuador is being challenged in both the Southern District of New York and in an International Treaty arbitration.  During related Section 1782 proceedings, courts across the U.S. have found that the conduct of the Ecuador litigation was fraudulent and applied the crime/fraud exception to privilege assertions.
• Perez v. Dole Food Company, Inc.:   Lead trial counsel representing Dole Food Company against false claims that the company funded and directed the activities of AUC paramilitaries in the banana-growing regions of Colombia and is responsible for 60 deaths in connection with Colombia’s internal conflict between warring paramilitaries and guerillas in that region.
• Sanchez Osorio v. Dole Food Company, Inc., et al.:  Represents Dole in an action pending in the Southern District of Florida where plaintiffs seek to enforce a bellwether Nicaraguan judgment totaling approximately $100 million.  The District Court will address whether the Nicaraguan judiciary is politicized and corrupt and/or whether the defendants were denied due process in Nicaragua where the nearly billion-dollar judgment was obtained.  Pending the results of this evidentiary hearing, the Court is also poised to, if necessary, continue the investigation into the fraud recently uncovered and found to be endemic to Nicaraguan DBCP litigation.
• Dole Food Company, Inc.; DBCP Litigation:  Strategic counsel for Dole Food Company in defending its docket of DBCP litigation brought against the company nationally and internationally.  Thousands of plaintiffs from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and the Ivory Coast have asserted claims related to alleged DBCP exposure while working on banana farms.  Plaintiffs’ claims are pending both across the United States and in the plaintiffs’ countries of origin.  After leading the Nicaraguan investigation and intensive, protected and high-risk discovery, as co-lead trial counsel, Ms. Neuman recently obtained the dismissal with prejudice of all remaining claims by Nicaraguan plaintiffs pending in U.S. trial courts, as a sanction for the plaintiffs’ and plaintiffs’ counsel’s fraud on the court, and succeeded in having the only judgment rendered in favor of purported Nicaraguan banana workers remanded by a California Court of Appeal for potential dismissal based on a prima facie showing of fraud.  Ms. Neuman also successfully defeated all pending DBCP claims against Dole in Hawaii in Adams v. Dole and Patrickson v. Dole, including the only DBCP claims to have ever been made by U.S. agricultural workers.
• In re Redlands Tort Litigation:  Trial counsel for Lockheed Martin Corporation in state court toxic tort litigation brought by over 800 individual plaintiffs and two putative classes alleging personal injuries and medical monitoring damages for alleged groundwater contamination with TCE and ammonium perchlorate.  Seven successful writs of mandate resulted in the reversal of the trial court on key issues such as punitive damages, burden of proof and statute of limitations.  Judgment was entered in client’s favor as to 100% of the first group of test plaintiffs.
• In re Norco Tort Litigation:  Counsel for defendant engineering and testing company in toxic tort lawsuits brought by over 100 plaintiffs and a putative class of property owners in which defendant was accused of contaminating the groundwater flowing from a site located in Norco, California.  The lawsuit was resolved to client’s advantage with a successful strategy that resulted in the recovery of the client’s fees and costs.
• In re Burbank Environmental Litigation:  Trial counsel for aerospace company in federal toxic tort case brought by over 80 plaintiffs and three putative class actions alleging claims for personal injury, wrongful death, property damage, CERCLA response costs, medical monitoring and punitive damages in connection with alleged air and groundwater contamination with TCE, PCE and Cr6.  At time of trial, all class allegations had been defeated and only nine plaintiffs remained.  The case was settled during trial for an amount below plaintiffs’ hard costs.
• Elsie A. Abel v. Lockheed Martin Corporation:  Trial counsel in high-profile toxic tort case involving aircraft and rocket manufacturing facilities.  Suits were brought by thousands of residents alleging personal injuries and/or wrongful death stemming from groundwater contamination alleged to have occurred over the span of many decades.  A successful Daubert evidentiary hearing to exclude plaintiffs’ Fate and Transport experts and separate hearing on successful motions to exclude testimony of plaintiffs’ causation experts resulted in judgment in the client’s favor.
• Lee Anderson Minnelli v. Liza Minnelli Gest, etc.:  Successfully defended Liza Minnelli in a high-profile suit brought by her stepmother, Lee Minnelli, alleging elder abuse and breach of fiduciary duty.
• City of Long Beach v. Exxon Corporation:  Trial counsel for state and local government entities in oil royalty matter, which included a four-month jury trial in California.
• National coordinating counsel in multi-jurisdictional wrongful death and personal injury matters both at the trial and appellate levels, including before the Ninth Circuit and California Supreme Court.
• Lead trial counsel in trust litigation matters, including representations of both major trust companies and the heirs of United Parcel Services, Freedom Communications, Newhall Land and Farming, and Farmers Insurance.