William E. Thomson is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is Co-Chair of the firm’s Transnational Litigation and Foreign Judgments Practice Group and a member of the firm's Appellate and Constitutional Law, Securities Litigation, and Media and Entertainment Practice Groups. Mr. Thomson's practice focuses on federal and state appellate and supreme court litigation, and on strategic analysis and briefing in high-stakes cases in trial courts around the country. He has broad experience before both trial and appellate courts in foreign judgment recognition actions, product liability, mass tort, securities and consumer class actions, and First Amendment litigation.
In the Transnational Torts arena, Mr. Thomson is a key member of the team waging a multifaceted defense of Chevron Corporation against environmental claims emanating from Ecuador, in which the plaintiffs allege billions of dollars in damages. Among other things, Mr. Thomson has played major roles in Chevron’s intensive district court and appellate litigation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782, through which the company has obtained crucial evidence, including hundreds of hours of outtakes from the film “Crude” that captured the plaintiffs’ case from behind-the-scenes and that prompted The Wall Street Journal to devote an extensive editorial to what it called the “Shakedown in the Rainforest.” (September 23, 2010)
Mr. Thomson also plays a leading role in defending Dole Food Company, Inc. in its national and international DBCP litigation, brought by thousands of plaintiffs from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and the Ivory Coast, alleging personal injury claims relating to alleged exposure to DBCP on banana farms. Plaintiffs’ claims are pending in a number of courts both in the United States and in the plaintiffs’ countries of origin. Mr. Thomson was instrumental in obtaining the dismissal of three such cases pending in the Los Angeles Superior Court as a terminating sanction for plaintiffs’ and their counsel’s fraud on the court. Mr. Thomson also was the principal author of the motion that led the trial court to throw out a multi-million dollar punitive damage verdict in the first DBCP case to go to trial in the United States. His article entitled “Foreign Torts and the Commerce Clause: Territorial Limitations On State Power To Impose Punitive Damages” appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of ABA's Mass Torts Journal. Mr. Thomson also played a principal role successfully defending Dole in the Osorio v. Dole action filed in the Southern District of Florida, where plaintiffs sought to enforce a bellwether Nicaraguan judgment totaling approximately $100 million. Similarly, in Perez v. Dole he was a key member of the team that successfully represented Dole against false claims that the company funded and directed the activities of AUC paramilitaries in Colombia and was responsible for numerous deaths in connection with Colombia's internal conflict between warring paramilitaries and guerillas. The case was dismissed on demurrer.
In the appellate field, Mr. Thomson has extensive experience with constitutional challenges to punitive and statutory damages, working with companies to develop innovative, cutting-edge trial and appellate strategies for avoiding and redressing such awards. He has briefed or argued related motions and appeals in numerous jurisdictions around the country in a wide variety of substantive contexts, including product liability, environmental and mass tort, and insurance defense. Mr. Thomson was part of the team that persuaded the United States Supreme Court to vacate a $290 million punitive damage award against Ford Motor Company, which had been the largest personal injury award ever affirmed in U.S. history. On remand, the California Court of Appeal cut the award by over 90%. He also was a key member of the Ford team in the California Supreme Court in Johnson v. Ford, 35 Cal. 4th 1191 (2005), in which the Court rejected the "aggregate profit disgorgement" theory of punitive damages. He was a key member of the Ford team in Buell-Wilson v. Ford, in which courts slashed the jury award from $368 million to $82 million—including first appellate reduction of non-economic damages in California history—and in which the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of Philip Morris v. Williams, 127 S. Ct. 1057 (2007). Mr. Thomson was also a key member of the team that persuaded the Texas court of appeals to throw out, as a matter of law, the entire $95 million jury verdict in a case involving allegations of fraud.
In the securities area, Mr. Thomson has had major roles in defending clients in securities class actions, as well as corporate officers and directors in derivative cases. He has defended clients in front of and conducted investigations on behalf of corporate Special Committees. Mr. Thomson also has been principally responsible for several corporate control litigations. Mr. Thomson argued Neubauer v. Goldfarb, 108 Cal. App. 4th 47 (2003), the leading case on attempts to contractually limit the fiduciary duties of officers and directors of California corporations.
In the First Amendment field, Mr. Thomson has represented media entities seeking access to public records and defended the free speech interests of clients in business and class action litigation. For the Michael Jackson trial, he was a key member of the team representing a consortium of press organizations seeking access to pre-trial and trial documents and proceedings, and briefed and argued a number of motions in both the civil and criminal courts in Santa Maria and Santa Barbara.
Mr. Thomson served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Robert J. Kelleher in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California from 1996 to 1997. He received his law degree in 1996 from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. He earned a Ph.D. degree and an M.A. degree from the University of Chicago, and an A.B. degree from Princeton University, all in the field of political science. At the University of Chicago he was a John M. Olin Fellow at the Center For Inquiry Into The Theory And Practice Of Democracy. For his dissertation on the political theory of Alexis de Tocqueville he conducted research in Paris and is fluent in French. He also has a reading knowledge of Spanish.
Mr. Thomson is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, California Supreme Court, Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States District Courts for the Central, Northern, and Southern Districts of California.