Rod J. Stone is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.  He is a member of the firm’s Litigation Department and has extensive experience in antitrust, intellectual property, unfair competition and competitive business practices litigation, including class actions.  Mr. Stone’s antitrust litigation practice has encompassed a broad range of antitrust issues under the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, the Robinson-Patman Act, the FTC Act, and state antitrust and unfair competition laws.  He has litigated claims of alleged monopolization, tying, exclusive dealing, price fixing, group boycott, refusal to deal and price discrimination, among others, in civil litigation and government investigations throughout the country.

Most recently, Mr. Stone served as lead counsel representing DreamWorks Animation in In re Animation Workers Antitrust Litigation, a federal class action in the Northern District of California alleging a conspiracy among animation studios not to recruit employees and to fix salaries.  The case arose out of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into alleged "no poaching" agreements in the high tech industry in which Mr. Stone also represented DreamWorks Animation.  The district court granted final approval of a class settlement in June 2017.

Mr. Stone was a member of the trial team representing Hewlett-Packard Company in Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Oracle Corporation (Santa Clara Superior Court, California), where HP brought suit against Oracle for breach of contract and unfair competition following Oracle’s decision in March 2011 to cease offering new versions of its software products to customers running HP’s mission-critical Itanium servers.  The case was tried in two phases.  Following a four-week bench trial in June of 2012, the court issued a Statement of Decision that gave Hewlett-Packard a complete victory on all claims tried against Oracle.  Following an interlocutory appeal, the damages phase was tried to a jury in 2016 and the jury awarded HP $3.0 billion in damages. 

Mr. Stone also represented Intel Corporation in a monopolization suit filed by Advanced Micro Devices in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, a case which has been frequently characterized as the largest antitrust suit ever filed.  AMD alleged that Intel monopolized a worldwide market for microprocessors through alleged exclusive dealing agreements, below cost pricing, manipulation of technological standards and other purportedly anticompetitive conduct.  The parties reached a favorable global settlement in November 2009 to end all outstanding litigation, including AMD’s antitrust suit, two claims pending in Japan, and cross-license disputes.  Mr. Stone also represented Intel in government investigations and enforcement actions by the Federal Trade Commission, the New York Attorney General and the European Commission related to Intel’s alleged monopolization of the worldwide market for microprocessors.

Mr. Stone represented Raytheon in Adaptive Power Solutions, LLC v. Hughes Missile Systems Co., 141 F.3d 947 (9th Cir. 1998), in which the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of Raytheon and another major defense contractor in a Section 1 conspiracy case.  Mr. Stone also represented the World Poker Tour in Ferguson v. World Poker Tour Enterprises, Inc., in which the district court denied plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment on the antitrust claims brought by a group of professional poker players against WPTE.  A favorable settlement in which the players received no financial compensation was achieved following the denial of the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment.

Mr. Stone represented CFM International, Inc. (a joint venture of GE Aircraft Engines and Snecma), in Aviation Upgrade Technologies, Inc. v. Boeing et al., 78 Fed. Appx. 223 (9th Cir. 2003), in which CFM International obtained summary judgment on plaintiff’s claims under Section 1 of the Sherman Act alleging defendants’ decision not to sell aircraft engines to plaintiff for use in the re-engining of 727 aircraft constituted an anticompetitive group boycott.

Mr. Stone represented American Airlines in United States v. AMR Corp., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1141 (D. Kan. 2001), aff’d, 335 F.3d 1109 (10th Cir. 2003), in which American Airlines obtained summary judgment in a major predatory pricing and monopolization case brought by the United States Department of Justice.  Mr. Stone also was a member of a trial team that successfully defended one of the nation’s largest high-tech companies in a jury trial involving claims of alleged tying and monopolization.

Mr. Stone represented Toyota at trial and on appeal of an antitrust and tort case over Lexus distribution and export policies, culminating in a favorable jury verdict and a landmark decision of the California Supreme Court modernizing the state’s law of tortious interference, Della Penna v. Toyota, 11 Cal. 4th 376 (1995).

Mr. Stone has extensive experience in handling state and federal government investigations.  He has represented a wide range of companies by the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Securities Exchange Commission and state attorneys general involving antitrust, health care fraud, consumer protection, securities, false claims and other issues.

Mr. Stone also has significant class action experience in antitrust and unfair competition cases.  He represented Tenet Healthcare Company in a series of nationwide class actions alleging that the pricing practices employed at Tenet’s subsidiary hospitals with respect to uninsured patients were unfair.  A favorable settlement was achieved and The Wall Street Journal and other publications commented that the settlement provided a blueprint for similar settlements by other providers of similar class actions.

In addition to his litigation practice, Mr. Stone also represents clients in connection with mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, including merger-clearance matters before the DOJ and FTC. Mr. Stone also regularly counsels technology and entertainment clients in antitrust matters involving patents, copyrights and other intellectual property.

Mr. Stone received his law degree magna cum laude from the University of Illinois in 1988 and served as an Associate Editor of the University of Illinois Law Review.  He received his bachelor of arts degree in journalism with honors from Southern Illinois University in 1984.  Mr. Stone is a past member of the Executive Committee of Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Antitrust Section.  Mr. Stone also is the former General Editor of The Antitrust Report, an antitrust journal published by LexisNexis.