Dispute resolution
As global chair of the litigation & trial department at Latham & Watkins, based in Orange County, Michele Johnson has extensive experience across the full gamut of commercial litigation matters, with recent focus on securities and M&A litigation. Recent successes have included the representation of Sarepta Therapeutics in a patent dispute with Nippon Shinyaku regarding the development of medicine for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy; initially defending Sarepta against Nippon’s claims for damages of $290m and which ended with the jury deciding that Nippon instead owed $116m to Sarepta. She also secured a total summary judgment in a securities class action with plaintiffs alleging that misleading statements were made about a new drug for ANCA-associated vasculitis.
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Profile
Position
Michele Johnson, Global Chair of the Litigation & Trial Department, is consistently recognized as a leading national trial lawyer.
Michele represents industry-leading companies, officers and directors, special committees, and financial institutions in connection with:
- Securities class actions
- Shareholder derivative litigation
- Mergers and acquisitions litigation
- Battles for corporate control
- Fiduciary duty cases
- Proxy contests
- SEC enforcement actions
- Internal investigations
- Other complex, high-exposure litigation
Michele’s recent representations include securities class action trials, special committee engagements in controlling stockholder transactions, multi-jurisdictional litigation arising out of solicited and hostile takeover attempts, and investigations and litigation on behalf of special committees and boards of directors related to public company crises. She has significant trial experience involving securities, contract, product liability, unfair business practices, intellectual property, tax, and insurance bad faith trials.
Michele is a former member of Latham’s Executive Committee and the former Managing Partner of the Orange County office. She has served on the firm’s Pro Bono and Associates Committees as well. She serves on the boards of the Georgetown University Law Center, Berkeley Center for Law and Business, and Orange County Bar Foundation’s Project Youth, is a member of the American Bar Association’s Corporate Laws Committee, and is past president of the Orange County chapter of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers.
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