Smith Anderson Closes 2024 with Landmark Litigation Wins and $11B in Completed Transactions

Smith Anderson capped off 2024 with a strong performance across both litigation and transactional work, reflecting our firm’s deep bench of legal talent and commitment to delivering exceptional client service.

Our award-winning litigation team, honored as the North Carolina Firm of the Year for the sixth consecutive year by Benchmark Litigation®, skillfully handled hundreds of disputes, collectively exceeding $1 billion in controversy. The firm also advised on more than 350 national and international transactions totaling over $11 billion in value, including serving as legal counsel to global contract research organization Fortrea in the $340 million divestiture of its Endpoint Clinical and Fortrea Patient Access businesses to Arsenal Capital Partners, enabling Fortrea to focus on core clinical research services.

2024 transaction highlights include:

• Advised on more than 40 Mergers & Acquisitions, including representing CoreRx, Inc., a private-equity owned, industry-leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), in its $130M tender offer for and acquisition of Nasdaq-listed Societal CDMO, Inc.
• Advised AgTech & FoodTech companies on collaborations, licensing and technology transactions to drive sustainable food innovations, including Pairwise’s joint venture with Corteva, Inc. (NYSE: CTVA) to advance gene editing using the Fulcrum™ Platform, developing resilient, resource-efficient crops.
• Represented more than 250 Sponsor, Mezzanine, Venture and other Debt Finance transactions totaling over $2B in value.
• Represented dozens of clients with Real Estate Development and Construction transactions totaling over $4B in value.
• Advised dozens of Start-Up and Growth Company clients in matters totaling more than $60M.

Businesses across industries relied on our trial-tested litigators to handle their most complex disputes—many involving multi-party, multi-jurisdiction litigation. Our team represented clients in both state and federal courts across a broad spectrum of litigation areas, including intellectual property, environmental law, shareholder actions, real estate and construction disputes, employment law, product liability, complex commercial contracts, healthcare matters, insurance coverage claims and data breach incidents. Our work spanned key sectors such as banking, aerospace, food and agriculture, manufacturing, real estate and energy, with many matters involving novel legal issues, cutting-edge technologies and precedent-setting outcomes.

Among the firm’s notable litigation matters in 2024 are the following:

• Successfully defended a financial institution in a federal patent infringement case in Texas involving technology and systems for secure banking data storage.
• In a landmark zoning decision strengthening private property rights in N.C., the N.C. Supreme Court ruled in favor of our client, Schooldev East, LLC, overturning a last-minute zoning reinterpretation that blocked its K-12 charter school project. The Court’s ruling reaffirmed that ambiguous zoning ordinances must be interpreted “in favor of the free use of land” and that local governments cannot retroactively alter zoning rules to obstruct development.
• Represented North Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, Inc. (NCFB) in the lead case involving a tax credit dispute with the N.C. Department of Revenue (DOR) related to NCFB’s renewable energy investments. The DOR reversed its position and disallowed credits for investors statewide. The N.C. Business Court reversed DOR’s ~$24 million assessment and upheld NCFB’s rights to its tax credits, permitting pro-payer settlements of hundreds of similar cases involving $750 million in tax credits.
• Representing a climate-focused forest management company in a breach of contract lawsuit arising out of carbon offset credits sold under California’s “cap and trade” program, related to timberland in West Virginia.
• Representing a national food company with multiple brands in complex insurance coverage litigation against carriers who have denied coverage for liability arising out of litigation filed against our client in federal and state court in N.C. The case involves significant damages to the food company and has involved a number of novel questions of insurance law.
• Represented a leading electric aerospace company in a contract dispute with its supplier that claimed exclusive rights to participate in an aircraft development and manufacturing program, alleging hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Smith Anderson resolved the matter without any payment by our client, including recovery of its IP and a declaratory judgment establishing that the supplier had no further rights in the program.
• Representing a manufacturer of chemicals used in lifesaving firefighting foam in more than 10,000 toxic tort cases throughout the nation that are pending before a multi-district litigation panel. The cases involve substances known as PFAS; state and federal regulators continue to wrestle with whether and how to regulate and remediate PFAS chemical contamination.

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