White & Case Named Litigation Team of the Year
June 25, 2008, The Lawyer

White & Case has been named Litigation Team of the Year at The Lawyer Awards.  In particular, the Firm's work on the case of Ian Norris, led by partner Alistair Graham in London, was singled out by the judges.  The case, which has been in the headlines since it began more than three years ago and has been fought in the context of controversial new fast track extradition arrangements between the UK and USA, has been closely followed by UK business at large, human rights groups and many politicians, because of its potentially seismic impact on both UK extradition and competition law.
 
White & Case has been defending Ian Norris, former CEO of Morgan Crucible Group, against a controversial attempt by the US Department of Justice to extradite him for alleged price-fixing activities.  At the heart of the case has been the Department of Justice’s attempt to recharacterise the offense of price-fixing as the old English common law offence of conspiracy to defraud in order to make it an extraditable offence for price-fixing activities said to have been carried out before it was made a statutory offence in the UK by the Enterprise Act 2002.  Earlier this year, White & Case took the case to the House of Lords, the UK's highest court, and on March 12, 2008 the Law Lords unanimously agreed with our arguments and ruled that price-fixing does not constitute conspiracy to defraud and that therefore, Ian Norris could not be extradited to the United States on price-fixing charges.

Had the precedent-setting attempt been successful it would have exposed UK business to similar extradition requests from the US, as well as marking a major shift in UK competition law by effectively retrospectively criminalizing price-fixing activities for the period prior to when they were made a statutory criminal offence by the Enterprise Act of 2002.  For further information on the case click here.

Complete listing of White & Case's Awards, Rankings and League Tables