William R. Sears 

William R. Sears joined Quinn Emanuel’s New York office in 2014 right out of law school. It was there, he said, “where I cut my teeth on financial institutions litigation.”

Except for a year as a federal judicial clerk in Philadelphia, Sears stayed on in New York, working on complex financial and antitrust matters until he and his wife moved to California in 2019. “That was a really exciting shift for me because I was able to bring my financial institution experience to bear … for California-based clients.”

One set of complex financial litigation he is working on now involves an opponent headquartered in California rather than a California client. He represents the health technology and research company IQVIA, based in North Carolina, in three lawsuits opposite Pleasanton-based Veeva Systems Inc., which is trying to invalidate Sears’ client’s noncompete agreements. Veeva Systems Inc. v. IQVIA Inc., RG21111679 (Ala. Super. Ct., filed Sept. 2, 2021).

He also is representing IQVIA against Veeva in a Delaware action to recover stock grants from a former employee.

The case he is most excited about, also filed in Delaware, is a shareholder derivative action against the Dell computer company, founder Michael Dell and others. Sears was part of the Quinn Emanuel team that, along with four other plaintiffs’ firms, won a whopping $1 billion all-cash settlement for shareholders.

He said the “historic settlement … is the largest cash settlement in Delaware Chancery Court history.” It may even be the largest cash settlement in a stockholder case reached in any state court, he added. In re Dell Technologies Inc. Class V Stockholders Litigation, 2018-0816 (Del. Ch. Ct., filed Nov. 8, 2018).

Moreover, the Delaware court gave final approval to the settlement in April, and in July, it approved a $266.7 million fee award for the five plaintiffs’ firms.

What made the case especially exciting for Sears was working on the team that added Goldman Sachs as a defendant. “It allowed me to bring my financial experience to bear on what for me was a relatively new area, which was stockholder litigation in Delaware.”

They argued that the giant financial services firm facilitated the defendants’ breaches of fiduciary duty in a complicated merger transaction. Goldman moved to dismiss, but after intense litigation, it withdrew its motion just prior to argument, “which we took as a sign that the claims perhaps were not as meritless as they said.”

In a newer case back in California, Sears is representing a proposed class of ticket purchasers suing Ticketmaster and Live Nation for antitrust violations. Heckman v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., 2:22-cv-00047 (C.D. Cal., filed Jan. 4, 2022).

Last month, U.S. District Judge George Wu rejected Live Nation’s bid to compel arbitration. That was “a very, very important ruling,” Sears said.

— Don DeBenedictis