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Particular grasp to resolve whether or not Quinn Emanuel…
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Particular grasp to resolve whether or not Quinn Emanuel legal professionals should contribute to $3M sanction
By Debra Cassens Weiss
July 15, 2025, 8:45 am CDT
A federal decide imposed a big sanction for alleged misrepresentations in regards to the want for Natera Inc. to introduce a supplemental skilled report shortly earlier than a jury trial. Sipa through AP Pictures
A federal decide in San Francisco ordered the fee of practically $3 million in authorized charges to a medical diagnostics firm and appointed a particular grasp to find out whether or not legal professionals at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan must be at the very least partly accountable for fee.
Senior U.S. District Decide Edward M. Chen awarded greater than $2.9 million in lawyer charges to Guardant Well being in a July 9 opinion.
Chen, a decide within the Northern District of California, imposed the sanction for alleged misrepresentations in regards to the want for defendant Natera Inc. to introduce a supplemental skilled report shortly earlier than a jury trial, report Reuters and Law360.
Quinn Emanuel represented Natera within the litigation accusing its shopper of false promoting and unfair competitors.
“However for the deliberate misrepresentation made to this court docket, the court docket wouldn’t have postponed trial and reopened discovery,” stated Chen, a decide within the Northern District of California.
The supplemental report was based mostly on a medical research often known as the COBRA research that examined Guardant’s colorectal most cancers screening product. The misrepresentations left the impression that info on the COBRA research “was late breaking and seemingly new,” Chen wrote in an October 2024 choice.
However the skilled really had earlier information of check info, one thing that got here to mild based mostly on emails offered by the Rutgers Most cancers Institute of New Jersey. The institute was concerned within the research and was the skilled’s employer. The skilled maintained he was not capable of finding any communications with COBRA investigators.
Jurors awarded greater than $292 million in damages to Guardant Well being in November 2024 in its go well with accusing Natera of constructing deceptive claims about their competing assessments for colorectal most cancers.
Natera has stated it disagrees with the jury choice and can search to overturn it. The corporate has filed a movement for judgment as a matter of regulation or for a brand new trial.
Chen stated within the October choice that sanctions are warranted for “deliberate misrepresentations” by Natera and its skilled witness. Chen additionally stated in October that sanctions have been “seemingly acceptable” for Quinn Emanuel after its correspondence with the skilled prompt the regulation agency misled the court docket in regards to the timing of the skilled’s information.
Guardant then sought lawyer charges and prices of $2,985,909 in addition to punitive sanctions—together with a referral to state ethics regulators—towards Quinn Emanuel legal professionals “who seem to have had a hand on this conduct,” Chen stated.
The Quinn Emanuel legal professionals advised Chen in declarations that their representations to the court docket have been made in a good-faith perception of their truthfulness after counting on the skilled witness.
“These declarations largely proceed with the identical narrative Natera’s counsel beforehand acknowledged—all of them relied on [the expert’s] representations,” Chen stated. “Natera’s counsel states they have been ‘shocked’ upon the invention that [the expert] really had emails and had obtained an preliminary draft of the COBRA research outcomes. The court docket beforehand discovered this line of argument greater than silly.”
The legal professionals’ declarations don’t warrant a deviation from a previous discovering of unhealthy religion, Chen stated. The variety of requested attorney-fee hours by Guardant is cheap as is its requested billing charge, based on him.
The court docket can award lawyer charges to Guardant towards Natera, Quinn Emanuel or particular attorneys. Chen stated he’s deferring questions on apportionment for decision by the particular grasp. He’s additionally deferring to the particular grasp Guardant’s request for a private nice towards the legal professionals and a referral to the State Bar of California.
Quinn Emanuel launched this assertion to the ABA Journal:”We respectfully disagree with the court docket’s findings as a result of we have now at all times performed ourselves with candor and in good religion. We sit up for presenting the total info surrounding this matter to the particular grasp.”
Natera didn’t instantly reply to an ABA Journal electronic mail searching for remark.
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