Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Crisis Management Practice Group offers a vital and increasingly essential resource in today's complex and threatening legal environment.  The Group includes skilled and battle-tested lawyers with the experience to assist clients facing a major, company-threatening crisis.  Our lawyers have demonstrated their effectiveness in dealing with all three branches of the United States government, state law enforcement and regulatory officials, and international regulators.  Members of this team are also experienced in developing and implementing a prompt and effective media strategy to deal with any crisis.

The Gibson Dunn Crisis Management Group possesses wide-ranging substantive experience in and out of government in connection with criminal law and complex civil litigation, media relations and media legal issues, antitrust, environmental regulation, banking and currency, securities and corporate governance, accounting, insurance, international trade, congressional investigations, homeland security, transportation, energy, immigration and border issues, election law, and employment disputes.

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Crisis Management Group is led by Theodore B. Olson, former Solicitor General of the United States, former Assistant United States Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, a litigator who specializes in complex and politically sensitive matters, and a confidant of two U.S. Presidents.  Mr. Olson and the other members of the Crisis Management Group supply unparalleled legal and strategic advice for responding to crises both inside and outside the courtroom, and they have substantial experience operating in the public relations arena--a skill set that has become essential to resolving the most serious and fast-moving legal challenges.  The Group consists of an outstanding cadre of seasoned partners and younger professionals, including graduates of America's finest law schools with experience clerking for the nation's leading judges, and years of service in government at the highest levels.  Under Mr. Olson's direction, the Group is prepared to react swiftly and decisively when called into action.

The Group has lawyers in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Denver, London, Paris, Brussels and Munich.  It includes former federal prosecutors who specialize in internal investigations and provide executives and audit committees the key legal insights necessary to forge corporate strategy, as well as securities and labor lawyers experienced in responding to attacks upon pension, corporate governance, and accounting practices.  Its experienced litigators, including former judges, aggressively defend civil suits wherever they are filed, and pursue winning strategies at every level--if necessary, all the way to the Supreme Court, where the group's lawyers have argued more than 60 cases involving issues of national and international significance.  The group's bipartisan team of specialists in legislative and public policy matters, including former Members of Congress and high-ranking officials drawn from government at both the federal and state levels, provides strategic counsel in addressing the legislative, regulatory, and public-relations aspects of any crisis.

In today's environment, the right response to a crisis--whether it is a whistleblower's surprise allegation, a significant and unexpected accounting problem, a product recall, a media or Internet  "exposé" about a business line, or the announcement of a government investigation--requires a cohesive team equipped to deploy and take immediate action on multiple fronts.  A company facing these threats has very little time before issues become framed and fixed in the public mind, and it often must deal immediately and simultaneously with federal and local prosecutors, regulatory agencies, concerned investors and directors, the private plaintiffs' bar, congressional investigators, and the press.  And as a crisis unfolds, a legal team must be able to advise, in an efficient and coordinated manner, on all of these fronts, and on the new and unexpected fronts that inevitably will develop.

When serious threats arise, companies and people in America and abroad rely on Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to provide multi-faceted solutions.  The Firm's experience includes:

• Representing President (George W.) Bush in both federal and state court throughout the 2000 Florida recount, including winning two crucial victories in the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Firm briefed and argued the first Supreme Court case in the space of only ten days from certiorari petition to oral argument, and the second in only five days.  Mr. Olson argued for the President in federal district court, before the en banc Eleventh Circuit, and both times before the Supreme Court--facing different opposing counsel each time.
  
• Representing President Reagan in various capacities, including the Iran-Contra controversy, during which the Firm aided the President in his cooperation with the independent counsel's investigation, his appearance as a third-party witness in other cases, and his response to demands by both the independent counsel and private parties for highly sensitive presidential documents.
  
• Representing Aetna, one of the country's largest managed care organizations, against a massive campaign of civil suits brought by the same plaintiffs' lawyers who won billions from the tobacco industry.  The Firm served as lead defense counsel in the consolidated MDL proceedings, and devised and successfully implemented a strategy to defeat the certification of a nationwide class of insureds seeking billions in damages under RICO, ERISA, and various other state and federal theories.  In separate cases, after winning crucial victories for Aetna in the multidistrict civil litigation and in the Eleventh Circuit, the Firm assisted Aetna in negotiating a favorable settlement consistent with the company's strategy of improving relations with physicians.
  
• Representing Janus Capital Group, one of America's largest mutual-fund managers, on multiple fronts concerning the practice of "market timing."  Gibson Dunn lawyers serve as lead defendants' counsel for the mutual fund industry in multidistrict federal civil litigation; have already won dismissal of numerous claims under the federal securities statutes and state law; have persuaded the Seventh Circuit to hold the plaintiffs' claim preempted by federal law; and this year will represent Janus in the Supreme Court, arguing that defendants in securities suits can appeal erroneous remand decisions.  The Firm also conducted an internal investigation, and represented Janus in dealing with federal and state prosecutors and securities regulators, and successfully negotiated a settlement of all contemplated charges.
  
• Representing Madison Square Garden, L.P. (MSG), and members of Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen community in their successful bid to stop a football stadium from being built in their neighborhood at huge public expense.  The Firm brought two lawsuits challenging the adequacy of the environmental review of the project, another suit challenging the sale of the publicly-owned stadium site to the New York Jets for hundreds of millions of dollars less than its full value, and a fourth challenging the state development agency's approval of the project's financing.  Working closely with the clients' public relations and government lobbying resources, the Firm provided the principal public face for the clients and shaped their overall public relations strategy; a Gibson Dunn lawyer even participated in a number of televised debates about the proposed stadium with each of the lead lawyers for the New York Jets.  Gibson Dunn lawyers are also defending MSG against retaliatory federal antitrust litigation brought by the Jets after the stadium proposal was defeated.
  
• Representing Coca-Cola's audit committee in investigating a whistleblower's allegations of accounting irregularities, retaliation, and racial discrimination.
  
• Representing a leading retailer in appealing the certification of the largest employment class action in U.S. history.
  
• Reversing record-breaking punitive damages awards.  On behalf of Ford Motor Company, Gibson Dunn persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate a $290 million punitive damage award that had been the largest personal injury award ever affirmed on appeal in the United States.  On remand, the California Court of Appeal cut the award by over 90%.  The Firm also convinced the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reverse a $262 million damage award against DaimlerChrysler--at the time, the third-largest verdict ever against an auto manufacturer.  And the Firm won its challenge in the Michigan Supreme Court to the largest sexual harassment verdict in U.S. history ($21 million).
  
• Successfully defending NextWave Telecom in federal appeals courts, before the FCC, and in the Supreme Court against the federal government's attempt to seize the company's wireless spectrum licenses, worth more than $4 billion.  The Firm successfully persuaded the D.C. Circuit to restore the licenses to NextWave and to rebuff the FCC's attempt to secure a stay.  These crucial victories forced the FCC to cancel its attempt to auction the licenses to NextWave's competitors.  The Supreme Court thereafter affirmed the D.C. Circuit's decision by a decisive 8-1 vote.
  
• Representing news media organizations and individual journalists in sensitive First Amendment matters.  The Firm recently represented Time magazine and its reporter Matthew Cooper at multiple levels, including the Supreme Court, in opposing the special prosecutor's attempt to jail Mr. Cooper for resisting a subpoena on First Amendment grounds.  Firm lawyers represented multiple news organizations in litigation to open proceedings in the Michael Jackson case to the press, and participated in the Jackson trial on behalf of a journalist called as a witness.  On behalf of The Wall Street Journal, the Firm persuaded a federal district court to overturn the largest libel verdict in history ($222 million), and devised a strategy that caused the plaintiff to dismiss its case entirely.
  
• Handling major criminal and civil investigations, litigation, and public policy matters for the major accounting firms.  Gibson Dunn represented several firms and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants before Congress during the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, and continues to represent major accounting firms in regulatory and rulemaking proceedings before the SEC, PCAOB, and state agencies, as well as in False Claims Act cases and other civil litigation.
  
• Representing major corporations in environmental cases.  The Firm has brought significant Superfund litigation against the EPA; made the case to the Supreme Court that businesses can seek contribution for the costs they incur in Superfund cleanups; litigated citizen suits under the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act; handled major asbestos litigation; and represented the targets of transnational enforcement efforts.

For further information, please contact Theodore B. Olson in our Washington, D.C., office at (202) 955-8500, Randy Mastro in our New York office at (212) 351-3825, or Daniel M. Kolkey in our San Francisco office at (415) 393-8240.