Anne M. Champion is a partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. She is a member of Gibson Dunn’s Transnational Litigation, Environmental Litigation, Media Law, and Intellectual Property Practice Groups.

Ms. Champion has played a lead role in a wide range of high-stakes litigation matters, including trials.  Her practice focuses on complex international disputes, including RICO, fraud, and tort claims, and includes federal and state court litigation and international arbitration.  She also has significant experience in First Amendment and intellectual property disputes, and an active pro bono docket.

Most recently Benchmark Litigation named Ms. Champion to its 2022 list of the “Top 250 Women in Litigation.” Ms. Champion was also recognized by Who’s Who Legal in its 2022 Environment Guide. She has twice been named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer.  On July 17, 2020, she received recognition along with Ted Boutrous and Matthew McGill for defeating an attempt to block the publication of Mary Trump’s now-best seller Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.  She previously received the award on September 27, 2019 for the successful defeat of a petition to confirm an $18 billion sham Egyptian arbitration award against Chevron Corporation and Chevron USA, Inc.  In addition, The Legal 500 US has recognized Ms. Champion as a “Next Generation Lawyer” in the area of international litigation.  Ms. Champion and her efforts to resolve the cold case murder of a childhood friend are featured on the podcast Bonaparte from Imperative Entertainment.

Recent highlights include:

• Representing CNN and White House correspondent Jim Acosta in their successful suit to reinstate Mr. Acosta’s White House press credentials. After the district court entered a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump Administration immediately to restore Mr. Acosta’s White House press credentials days after Plaintiffs filed suit, the parties resolved their dispute.
• Representing White House correspondent Brian Karem in his suit to reinstate his White House press credentials. After the district court granted Mr. Karem’s motion for a preliminary injunction to reinstate his credentials, the Government appealed, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed decision in Mr. Karem’s favor, Karem v. Trump, 960 F.3d 656 (D.C. Cir. 2020).
• Representing shareholders of Devas Multimedia in proceedings to enforce arbitral awards and judgments against India and its state-owned enterprise, Antrix Corporation.
• Representing a U.S. investor in an ICSID arbitration in an expropriation claim against the Republic of Colombia.
• Chevron Corporation: Representing Chevron Corporation and Chevron U.S.A., Inc., in their successful defense of a petition to confirm a sham $18 billion Egyptian arbitral award in the Northern District of California, Waleed Al-Qarqani v. Chevron Corporation, 4:18-cv-03297-JSW (N.D. Cal.).
• Chevron Corporation:  Represented Chevron Corporation in its successful racketeering suit against Steven Donziger, a U.S. lawyer who masterminded a fraudulent scheme against the company involving environmental litigation in Ecuador. The trial victory resulted in an injunction barring enforcement of a $9 billion Ecuadorian judgment in any U.S. court.  The court found that Donziger and his co-conspirators had procured the Ecuadorian judgment through bribery and fraud, and had in fact ghostwritten the Ecuadorian judgment, along with a key damages report submitted to the Ecuadorian court by a purportedly neutral special master.  The trial court’s judgment was affirmed in full by the Second Circuit.  Chevron Corp. v. Donziger, 974 F. Supp. 2d 362 (S.D.N.Y. 2014); aff’d Chevron Corp. v. Donziger, 833 F.3d 74 (2d Cir. 2016),  denied, 137 S. Ct. 2268, 198 L. Ed. 2d 700 (2017).  Multiple foreign courts and an international arbitration tribunal have since agreed, based on the RICO trial evidence, that the Ecuadorian judgment is not enforceable.
• Citizens of Albany County:  Ms. Champion was one of the lead partners on the trial team that prevailed in a Voting Rights Act trial against the County of Albany and the County of Albany Board of Elections.  Pope v. County of Albany, 94 F. Supp. 3d 302 (N.D.N.Y. 2015).  Following a multi-week trial, the district court held that the County had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by adopting a redistricting plan that failed to add a fifth majority-minority district to the County Legislature following the 2010 Census, diluting the strength of minority voters.  As a result of the trial victory, the County Legislature was required to revise the districts to add a majority-minority district.
• Dole Food Company, Inc.:  Ms. Champion represented Dole Food Company in a wrongful death case brought by dozens of Colombian plaintiffs who alleged Dole had provided support for the Colombian paramilitary organization, the AUC.  After years of litigation, and after Ms. Champion deposed a former paramilitary leader who testified that the Plaintiffs’ lawyers had attempted to bribe him to provide false testimony against Dole in the case, Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed their claims with prejudice just months before trial.
• S. mobile phone carrier:  Won complete summary judgment of non-infringement for a U.S. mobile phone carrier in a patent infringement action involving Wi-Fi cellular switching technology in the Eastern District of Texas, affirmed by the Federal Circuit.
• The Cablevision Systems Corporation:  Won complete summary judgment of non-infringement for Cablevision in a patent infringement action involving interactive call processing and pay-per-view systems in the Central District of California.  Cablevision faced 40 patents and hundreds of claims at the outset of the litigation, and Ms. Champion also represented Cablevision on a related appeal that resulted in a precedential decision in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s power to require patent plaintiffs to limit their asserted claims during the course of discovery.  In re Katz Interactive Call Processing Patent Litigation, 639 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2011).
• Confidential Client:  Won summary judgment in lieu of complaint in New York State court in an action against guarantors of a real estate loan, resulting in a judgment of over $100 million after just months of litigation.

Ms. Champion earned her Bachelor of Science in physics with distinction from the University of Iowa and received the James A. Van Allen and the Myrtle K. Meier awards for excellence in physics.  She earned her Juris Doctor, summa cum laude, from George Washington University School of Law, where she was the recipient of the Raymond F. Hossfeld Merit Scholarship.  She served as an articles editor for The George Washington Law Review and published her case note, Another Brick in the Wall: United States v. Samuel and the Lower Courts’ Narrow Reading of Apprendi v. New Jersey Before Blakely v. Washington, 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1004 (2004).  Upon graduation, she was awarded the Willard Waddington-Gatchell prize for academic excellence and the John F. Evans prize for outstanding achievement in the clinical law program, D.C. Law Students in Court, and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Following law school, Ms. Champion clerked for the Honorable Max Rosenn on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Ms. Champion is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Northern Districts of New York, the Eastern District of Texas, and the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and the Federal Circuit.

Ms. Champion is proficient in Spanish and Italian.