Jamie L. Wine

As Jamie L. Wine has become more senior in her practice, she has learned that winning a case isn't always the most important goal.

"There are a lot of business considerations that aren't necessarily in tandem with the litigation perspective," Wine said. "To be the best litigator, you also have to be the best overall counselor to your client."

Good examples of that perspective are her two most recent high-profile cases. She and a partner won a summary judgment in May 2020 defeating the U.S. women's soccer team's equal-pay lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. Morgan v. U.S. Soccer Federation, 2:19-cv-01717 (C.D. Cal., filed March 8, 2019).

But that didn't solve the sport's real problem. "U.S. soccer couldn't be in a situation where the women's team, which is their prize team, was upset and still unhappy," Wine said. So even as the case was on appeal, Wine and her team worked hard to reach a settlement. Now, the men's and women's teams share equally in the money received from FIFA, which, she said, was the real source of the disparity.

The agreement was "this wonderful solution that got everybody on the same page, and that's really what we needed to do going forward," Wine said.

Her high-profile lawsuit about cheating in tournament chess was similar. Wine defended online tournament sponsor Chess.com in a defamation lawsuit from young star player Hans Moke Niemann, who was accused of cheating when he defeated the world champion. Niemann v. Carlsen, 4:22-cv-01110 (E.D. Mo., filed Oct. 20, 2022).

Even though Wine and her team got the case dismissed last June, her client needed to preserve the integrity of the game. "There was still work to be done," she said, but soon, "we all figured out a way to move forward productively together."

"There's a whole other benefit that you can bring your client if you're thinking ... beyond just litigation," Wine said. "What is [the client's] interest and how do we achieve that?"

Sports and entertainment litigation is only a small part of her practice. Throughout her career, she has represented the Big Four accounting firms, which has given her a good grasp of accounting issues. As a result, she has developed a specialty in accounting-heavy "spin" litigation, which often arises between a company and its new spin-off.

For instance, last year, she represented spinoff Kyndryl in arbitration against its former parent, IBM. A few years before, she won a $666 million arbitration award for spinoff DXC Technology Co. from Hewlitt-Packard Enterprises.

And now, she is defending DXC in several shareholder class actions where both DXC and HPE are defendants.

-- Don DeBenedictis