Latham Named to 2020 Appellate Hot List
Latham was once again named to the National Law Journal’s prestigious Appellate Hot List, which recognizes firms that tackled “novel issues and undoubtedly overcame unprecedented challenges over the past year, boasting high-profile and high-stakes wins in the nation’s highest appellate courts across a number of practice areas.”
Supreme Court & Appellate partner Richard Bress spoke to the NLJ and highlighted the firm’s unanimous affirmance by the US Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit of a victory Latham secured in the D.C. District Court for Merck, Amgen, and Eli Lilly. The 2019 district court win invalidated the Trump Administration’s attempt to force drug companies to disclose gross wholesale drug prices in television ads, and refer to those prices as the “list price” for the drug. Just 24 days passed between Latham filing the complaint in district court and winning a final order invalidating the rule – the day before the rule was set to go into effect. The Department of Health and Human Services appealed the ruling; and on June 16, 2020 the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed the win, tracking Latham’s textual and statutory arguments, and firmly rejecting the department’s claim that the rule was a valid exercise of its statutory authority. In closing, the Court noted that while HHS’s “regulatory authority is broad,” it may not “move the goalposts to wherever [it] kicks the ball.” The D.C. Circuit’s opinion will be an important precedent for future litigation over the scope of federal agencies’ statutory authority.
Bress also discussed the reasons for the firm’s success in the past year, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting, “we continued working hand-in-hand with our trial teams to persuasively frame and preserve issues for appeal, and approach every appeal with creativity, tenacity, and total commitment to our clients.”
Latham’s Supreme Court & Appellate Practice has achieved success for clients in high-stakes, high-profile appeals with far-reaching implications across a broad spectrum of substantive areas. The team also frequently handles complex litigation and dispositive motions in the lower courts and before regulatory agencies. The firm’s appellate team has represented clients in numerous groundbreaking and bet-the-company cases, with an outstanding record before the US Supreme Court and other appellate courts.