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Jonathan Watkins is co-chair of Cadwalader’s Global Litigation Group and head of the firm’s Corporate and Financial Services Litigation practice. He is a veteran trial lawyer who represents clients in high-stakes commercial disputes nationwide. His broad practice spans financial services, M&A, securities, sports, intellectual property, and antitrust litigation. Jonathan’s clients include public and private businesses, financial institutions, boards, special committees, investors, and individuals. He also represents clients in government and internal investigations, provides fiduciary duty advice, and represents technology companies in a variety of mission-critical litigation.
Jonathan’s securities, M&A, and financial services representations include:
- Advantage Capital Holdings LLC and its CEO in civil RICO litigation in the Southern District of New York.
- George Economou's Sphinx Investment Corp. in the High Court of the Marshall Islands in litigation challenging stock issuances that disenfranchise public stockholders.
- Thoma Bravo in an M&A dispute that culminated in the repricing of its $10.4 billion acquisition of Anaplan.
- J.P. Morgan in litigation in CMBS-related litigation in the Southern District of New York.
- State banks and their service providers in disputes over a state’s novel interpretation of its licensing statutes and the asserted federal preemption of those statutes.
- The founders of a leading cryptocurrency exchange in M&A, regulatory, and antitrust matters.
- A leading financial institution over allegations that it manipulated interest-rate benchmarks and the pricing of corporate bonds.
- The former CEO of SCANA Corp. in securities, RICO, derivative, and other litigation related to the company’s abandonment of its nuclear-power project.
- Independent directors of Reynolds American in shareholder suits challenging the company's $27.4 billion acquisition of Lorillard, and advising those directors on the company’s sale to British American Tobacco.
- Merrill Lynch’s independent directors in New York and Delaware shareholder suits over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger.
- Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank in litigation over the failed Hexion-Huntsman merger, including Hexion’s New York case seeking specific performance of $15.4 billion of financing commitments, and at jury trial in Texas, where Huntsman sought $4.65 billion in compensatory tort damages.
- Credit Suisse on Section 10(b) claims arising from the collapse of Enron, including the $40 billion lead securities class action.
His competition and intellectual property representations include:
- Zemcar in trade secret and business tort litigation against Uber Technologies.
- Hyland and Alfresco Software in several patent disputes with a competitor over machine learning and enterprise information management technology.
- Renaissance Technologies, the preeminent statistical-arbitrage fund, in mission-critical intellectual property litigation.
- Rubicon Global, a market-disrupting technology company, in several suits against incumbent oligopolists.
- Qualcomm in several industry-shaping competition and patent-licensing disputes with Nokia and Broadcom.
Jonathan’s recent sports-related representations include:
- Georgia K. Angelos in litigation over control of the Baltimore Orioles.
- A major corporate sponsor in matters related to COVID-19’s impact on the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and PGA Tour, as well as in connection with the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
Jonathan also represents clients on appeal, particularly in matters presenting questions of constitutional law. He has represented:
- The City of Asheville, North Carolina in its constitutional challenge to the state’s attempted taking of Asheville’s water system.
- A banking trade association in a First Amendment challenge to state campaign finance restrictions.
- A trust in due process and dormant commerce challenges to a state's taxation of foreign trusts.
- Professor Erwin Chemerinsky as amicus curiae in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, a case involving a challenge to Indiana’s voter identification law.
- Qualcomm, as amicus curiae in multiple matters, including Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., the seminal patent exhaustion case.
*Certain representations occurred before Jonathan joined Cadwalader.
Jonathan has been recognized by several publications, including the Lawdragon 500 Leading Litigators in America, for his work in Securities, Financial, IP, and Appellate Litigation, The Best Lawyers in America, for Commercial and Securities Litigation, and The Legal 500 US , for Securities Litigation--Defense.
Jonathan graduated magna cum laude from Fordham University School of Law, where he earned the Fordham Law School Prize, served on the Fordham Law Review, and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University. Jonathan began his career with Cravath, Swaine, Moore LLP.
