Kaye Scholer Secures $3.4 Million in Attorneys' Fees for Elan Pharmaceuticals

On April 14, Kaye Scholer received an order from Judge Laporte of the Northern District of California awarding longtime client Elan Pharmaceuticals (Elan), now Perrigo Company, attorneys' fees of $3.4 million. The fee award was a follow-on order from Judge Laporte's 2015 order that found Elan's case exceptional. Notably, Judge Laporte reduced the amount requested by only $300,000, a considerably small amount relative to the total fees requested.

The attorneys' fees award relates to a patent infringement case involving early onset Alzheimer's disease assays and animal models that has been pending since 2010. The client team, led by Deborah Fishman, took over the case in early 2011. In 2012, the team obtained summary judgment and a dismissal with prejudice based on collateral estoppel application of lack of standing for deliberate misjoinder of inventors. This had been established in a parallel litigation in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The team deferred the fees briefing until after the merits appeal and the EDPA court had ruled on exceptional case. In April 2015, shortly after joining Kaye Scholer, the team filed a motion for exceptional case and, more recently, submitted a briefing in support of the reasonableness of the fees requested.

In addition to Fishman, the Kaye Scholer team representing Elan also included Katie Scott, Doug Smith and Assad Rajani. Scott and Smith were instrumental in both the exceptional case and reasonable fees motions.