Although it can take years, there comes a time of decision. Sometimes billions of dollars are at stake — or a priceless principle. San Diego attorneys have celebrated big wins recently, gaining national recognition in the process. Here’s how some of them landed the big ones.

A&J Liquor Co. Inc. v. State Compensation Insurance Fund

In 1996, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton’s Greg Long and Fred Puglisi entered an Alice in Wonderland maze of actuaries and economists. Five policyholders in the State Compensation Insurance Fund, representing 163,900 class action members, charged that the fund had cooked up an elaborate scheme among 2,000 adjusters in 21 offices to inflate claims by workers’ comp applicants, so that dividends to policyholders like A&J would be reduced, and premiums increased.

The plaintiffs sought $1.1 billion, plus interest and punitive damages.

In a June 17 judgment for the defense, Superior Court Judge Thomas Munter ended seven years of litigation with a 117-page opinion in which the State Fund was found to have acted in the interests of its policyholders.

“If we lost, the fund would probably be kaput right now which means that 53 percent of the employers in California would have no workers’ comp insurance,” Long says.

The case required Long and Puglisi to stay focused during lengthy examinations and cross examination of witnesses that took weeks. “Three witnesses took nearly two months,” Puglisi recalls.

Long says the judge’s critical questioning of the plaintiffs’ experts was a good sign. “That led me to believe he had serious doubts about what they were saying,” Long says.

Long and Puglisi had to know enough about the economic science of estimating the future costs of past events to poke holes in the plaintiffs’ claims. “You learn more about economic analysis than you ever wanted to know,” Puglisi says.

The celebration was muted. “I got some sleep,” Long says.

Broadcom v. Intel

The federal courthouse in Texarkana, population 60,000, straddles the border between Arkansas and Texas. “The courthouse is right in the middle of the state line,” says John Gartman, managing principal of Fish & Richardson’s San Diego office. “If you step into the left hallway you’re in the eastern district of Texas and if you step into the right hallway you’re in the western district of Arkansas.”

Gartman was in Texarkana representing Santa Clara-based Intel Corp. in the latest installment of its ongoing chipset patent infringement war with Irvine-based Broadcom Corp. Federal jurisdiction law allows a case to be brought against Intel pretty much anywhere there’s a Pentium-powered computer. Texarkana has a reputation for plaintiff-friendly juries and for fast-tracking cases. Gartman says fast tracking is “always scary for the defendant.” A sympathetic jury could award Broadcom “south of $100 million,” and worse, grant injunctive relief that could disrupt Intel’s chipset business.

Into this environment Gartman sent a team of Fish & Richardson colleagues, working out of computer networked “war rooms” with “millions of pages of documents.” They were anticipating a long encampment. “We were in Texarkana on July 7, and the trial was set for July 14. We were supposed to pick the jury on the eighth.”

But in a hearing prior to trial, Fish & Richardson’s attorneys persuaded U.S. District Court Judge David Folsom that Broadcom’s claims weren’t worth the jury’s time. Judge Folsom granted Gartman a summary judgment.

This cut short the firm’s Texarkana visit by two weeks, and saved Intel the cost of a trial. Gartman wouldn’t discuss Fish & Richardson’s fee for a big win that saved potentially hundreds of millions, but said a “reverse contingency,” in which the winning defense firm gets a percentage of the savings, is not unheard of.

Gartman’s litigation group at Fish & Richardson is said to be the largest in town, growing to 55 attorneys in just five years.

Composite Rotor v. Beckman Coulter

David Doyle, patent litigation specialist and partner with the San Diego office of Morrison & Foerster, recently won an appeals court affirmation of a district court decision involving centrifuges.

“When you want to spin a liquid to separate out blood and cells from plasma, you put it in a centrifuge and it performs 10,000 rotations in a minute that causes the fluids to separate and then you analyze the separated material,” Doyle explains.

Doyle’s client, Beckman Coulter of Fullerton, was sued by Redwood City-based Composite Rotor for patent infringement. The two-year litigation came down to whether Composite’s patent covered only centrifuges made of composite material, or included Beckman’s product, which is made of aluminum and titanium.

Composite asked for damages of $100 million, and the two sides held settlement discussions that ultimately fell through. In court, Doyle argued that the language in the patent extolling the virtues of composite centrifuges over the metal kind worked as a disclaimer against Composite enforcing its patent against Beckman.

A U.S. district court judge in San Francisco granted Doyle’s motion for summary judgment in favor of Coulter, avoiding a trial. The decision was subsequently affirmed by a federal court in Washington that specializes in patent cases.

Should the patent have been drafted by Composite to cover all centrifuges, on the chance that it would have to be defended against manufacturers like Beckman, whose products are made of metal?

Doyle chuckled. “That question was asked in the appeal panel. I said the patent would have benefited from improved draftsmanship, but if you read the entire patent, the mission of the company was to patent a composite centrifuge.”

Doyle was headed to a meeting of trial lawyers and draftsmen to discuss the latest developments in patent law. “You’ve got to keep on top of this every week, because there are new cases coming out telling you about the latest traps for the unwary,” he says.

Walker v. City of San Diego

Latham & Watkins’ Ken Fitzgerald represented the NFL in an Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuit that threatened to shut down Super Bowl XXXVII.

A group of activists led by Beverly Walker decided to hold the league’s feet to the fire for the city not having completed renovations of Qualcomm Stadium promised to Walker and her group. So they filed a motion to prevent the Super Bowl from taking place.

Fitzgerald told the court that shutting down the Super Bowl wasn’t among the remedies contemplated by the ADA, and went on to frame the dispute as between the Walker activists and the city that should not involve the NFL.

“If the Super Bowl were cancelled it would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in losses,” Fitzgerald said.

Federal magistrate Leo Papas conducted personal inspections of the stadium, ruled that the city had made substantial progress in its promised renovations, and denied the Walker plaintiffs’ motion to cancel the big game. For its part, the NFL posted a $100,000 bond to take care of any claims by disabled fans that might arise out of the Super Bowl.

So was Fitzgerald ever worried that the judge just might decide to delay or even cancel the game?

“I would have been shocked if the judge had enjoined the Super Bowl, but you never know and obviously the stakes were very high,” Fitzgerald says.

Fitzgerald successfully represented the league in 1998 in another super controversy. The “Jews for Jesus” group wanted to pamphlet the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot, but NFL rules required a ticket to enter. Fitzgerald convinced the court that denying the group access to the parking lot was a reasonable security precaution and did not violate First Amendment rights.

And how did he celebrate his latest big win? “I went to the Super Bowl,” Fitzgerald says.

Earthquake Claimants v. Farmers Insurance

Shea McNitt & Carter’s Larry Shea isn’t worried about any one case these days — it is more like a thousand. After Chuck Quackenbush’s inglorious departure as insurance commissioner, the California Legislature decided to reopen the statute of limitations for claims against insurers arising from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Thousands of cases were filed against the state’s largest insurers: Allstate, State Farm and Farmers.

As Shea describes it, his job for Farmers is to “come up with a solution and get these cases organized so they don’t break out into a bunch of trials.”

Northridge already is recognized as the largest insured event in history pre-Sept. 11, and the court system isn’t set up for today’s mass tort litigation, Shea says. For Shea, it’s not all about wins, but resolving thousands of disputes without trying too many.

Shea says resolving Northridge claimants’ cases could take another three to five years. Billions already have been paid out, and the cases still to be resolved could cost insurers hundreds of millions.

Accordingly, Shea manages a staff of lawyers who are working the claims, while he remains focused on the larger picture. This includes consultations with the court to process the volume of litigation, meeting with the client, devising a management plan, and negotiating with the attorneys for plaintiffs.

“It doesn’t make any sense for society to dole out $300,000 in lawyers’ fees on a $500,000 dispute,” Shea says.

Shea’s earthquake experience may provide guidance to future litigators of mass tort litigation that can range from a toxic drug reaction to defective tires.

Asked how he plans to celebrate the end of the earthquake cases someday, Shea says, “I don’t know — go on to the next thing, there’s always another earthquake.”

Not literally, of course, but legally.