Practice Strengths

International Litigation: Defended Latin American government in sovereign debt litigation

Client: Latin American government

Type of Matter: Fifty-five lawsuits in 5 countries to recover $10 billion in defaulted sovereign commercial debt

Our Client's Challenge: Defend lawsuits while government was restructuring the economy in accordance with an IMF economic adjustment program.

The Goal: Create bankruptcy principles in U.S. and foreign law when no country has passed a bankruptcy code for governments.

Our Strategy: We aggressively defended the lawsuits and created a factual record demonstrating that the government was making difficult and austere changes in the economy in a manner approved by the IMF. We provided the courts with novel legal theories to justify bankruptcy-like stays of the lawsuits pending the economic adjustments and negotiation of an exchange offer with the country’s commercial creditors.

Results: Almost seven years after the first lawsuits were filed, the client successfully executed an exchange offer with its 180 commercial creditors. The courts imposed stays of creditor lawsuits and denied motions for attachment and execution based upon our novel legal theories. Only one creditor received more than the exchange offer amount.

International Litigation Experience

• Defended sovereign government in lawsuits in five countries arising from defaults in its foreign commercial debts.
• Tried and won a treble damage verdict against the Hunt brothers and others for manipulating silver prices.
• Won and enforced a judgment for ABB Inc., a leader in power and information tech for the energy and utility industries against a Norwegian company, and defended counterclaims, by using international treaties to enforce a U.S. award in Norway.
• Pursue litigation worldwide for a venture investor involving such claims as misrepresentation on a Tokyo real estate project and tax fraud on a three-hotel project in Belgium.
• Acted as lead counsel for a major engineering company in the appeal and overturning in U.S. District Court of an international arbitration award involving a construction project in South America.
• Recovered an Austrian bank's investment in a publicly traded American manufacturer by pursuing securities fraud and other claims in U.S. District Court that resulted in the sale of the manufacturer.
• Won jury verdicts for a German manufacturer and a related company in separate fraud and malpractice cases in Kansas and Virginia—with the Virginia verdict for our client on a counterclaim resulting in one of the largest such awards in the state's history.
• Defended foreign government against $500 million claim alleging denial of justice and other violations of international law at ICSID.
• Handled products liability litigation in the U.S. for, among others, a Greek tour company, a Jamaican resort, a Mexican energy company and a Swedish equipment manufacturer.
• Settled in the U.S. a dispute between a global communications company and a Chinese company over a failed satellite launch.
• Enforced license agreement against Korean licensee in International Chamber of Commerce arbitration.
• Provided services to the governments and individuals to recover assets wrongfully removed from those countries through criminal conduct, loan defaults and other activities.

About Baker Hostetler's Litigation Team