Samuel G. Liversidge

Los Angeles

Litigation

Samuel G. Liversidge is co-chair of the litigation department at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP's Los Angeles office and a member of the firm's antitrust and class action practice groups. His clients include The Hewlett-Packard Co., Chevron Corp., Merck & Co., Inc. and General Electric Co.

While in law school, Liversidge entered Gibson Dunn's 1994 summer program and has been with the firm since. "It's been a great place to work," he said.

Litigation over HP's printer ink cartridges is ongoing. Liversidge is preparing for a class certification hearing in November as plaintiffs contend that HP's firmware updates can disable non-HP cartridges. "These are bigger claims than in the last one," he said. Mobile Emergency Housing Corp. v. HP Inc., 5:20-cv-09157 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 17, 2020).

In Liversidge's most recently completed HP case, he obtained denial of class certification and dismissal. Plaintiffs advanced two fraud-based theories on behalf of millions of HP inkjet printer owners in California, New York, Arkansas and Arizona over a six-year period during which HP printers allegedly used color ink when printing what seemed to be black and white or grayscale documents. And the plaintiffs claimed that 28 HP printer models stop printing when any one of the installed cartridges runs out of ink, a function known as print-to-stop. Capelak v. HP Inc., 3:20-cv-02450 (N.D. Cal., filed April 10, 2020).

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco denied cert due to atypical named plaintiffs and a lack of commonality. One plaintiff, John Cepelak, said in his deposition that he liked HP's print-to-stop feature because it avoided streaky tests.

In sprawling multidistrict antitrust litigation over alleged delay of generic competition for Merck's blockbuster cholesterol drug Zetia, plaintiffs sought treble damages of more than $12 billion. Liversidge secured denial of certification of an antitrust class of 35 large and sophisticated drug wholesalers. On the eve of a trial that was to feature other plaintiffs in April 2023, Merck settled with all remaining plaintiff groups. In re Zetia (Ezetimibe) Antitrust Litigation, 2:18-md-02836 (E.D. Va., filed June 15, 2018).

"There was huge exposure in that case," Liversidge said. "We thought we had a good chance of prevailing at trial, but with that kind of exposure on the table, we had to assess the risk."

Liversidge won a Daily Journal 2023 Top Verdict award after prevailing for client Chevron in a massive $65 billion gas price-fixing case. He argued a successful summary judgment motion for his client and co-defendants. Persian Gulf Inc. v. BP West Coast Products LLS et al., 3:15-cv-01749 (S.D. Cal., filed Aug. 6, 2015).

--John Roemer