Financial Services Litigation & Investigations Group
Financial Services Litigation & Investigations Group
In the face of turmoil and uncertainty, the world's major financial institutions continue to choose our team to help them manage their business, litigation and reputational risks and thrive in the new economic and regulatory climate. To our clients we are much more than litigators - we are business partners who have a stake in their success.
JPMorgan Wins Summary Judgment Against Amaranth
- Client News
- November 29, 2012
As reported by The American Lawyer, the New York Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously affirmed a grant of summary judgment entered by Justice O. Peter Sherwood of the New York Supreme Court in favor of our client, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Plaintiff Amaranth LLC, a hedge fund that spectacularly imploded in September 2006 after losing billions of dollars within a matter of weeks, alleged that JPMorgan tortiously interfered with a potential natural gas futures transaction between Amaranth and Citadel Investment Group when JPMorgan purportedly made a defamatory statement to Citadel that impugned Amaranth's creditworthiness. Amaranth claimed the collapse of the supposed deal led to the hedge fund's downfall and sought billions of dollars in damages.
The Appellate Division held that that Amaranth failed to raise a genuine issue as to whether the alleged defamatory statement pleaded in the complaint was ever made, that a statement in a JPMorgan interrogatory response was not sufficiently analogous to the statement pled in the complaint, and that, in any event, the statement in the interrogatory response was non-actionable opinion and substantially true.
Litigation partner Eric Goldstein argued the appeal. The Paul, Weiss team included litigation partners Mark Pomerantz and Daniel Toal and counsel Darren Johnson.