History
The firm was founded in May 1890 by John D. Bicknel and Walter Trask. In 1897, Judge James Gibson joined the firm. Six years later, at the suggestion of mutual client Henry E. Huntington, [7] the firm merged with the law firm of former Los Angeles city attorney William Ellsworth Dunn and assistant city attorney Albert Crutcher, forming Bicknell, Gibson, Trask, Dunn & Crutcher, [8] [9] while creating the largest law firm in Los Angeles at the time. [10] In 1911, the firm was renamed Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. [8]
In 1914, the firm recruited its first attorney from Harvard Law School, Henry Prince, marking its transition to methods developed in the Eastern law schools. [8] By 1931, name partners Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher were deceased. New Deal legislation during the 1930s stimulated labor practice legal work in the firm. In 1943, the firm had 25 lawyers, increased to 39 by 1954, then to 63 a decade later. [8]
The firm opened offices in Washington, D.C. and in Paris, France in 1977, [8] and expanded further within the U.S. during the 20th century, as well as to Europe and Asia, opening its London office in 1980, and operating 21 law practices globally. [10] In 1980, the firm had about 200 lawyers and was rapidly expanding, to about 700 by 1991. In 1989, amid American trade expansion, the firm also became associated with the Brussels law firm of Van Bael & Bellis. [8]
In 1991, legally-trained historian Jane Wilson (later Adler), completed a book for the firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, lawyers: An early history, which received a Donald H. Pflueger Local History Award in 1993, for outstanding scholarship in depictions of economic growth in Southern California. [11]
Barbara Becker joined the firm with mentor Dennis Friedman in 2000, moving from an M&A partnership at Chadbourne & Parke. [12] She was elected chair and managing partner in 2021. [13]
In 2011, University of Arizona Press published F. Daniel Frost and the Rise of the Modern American Law Firm by University of Arizona College of Law professor (later dean emerita), Toni M. Massaro, a biography of partner F. Daniel "Dan" Frost, who had joined the firm in 1950, [14] becoming the managing partner in 1979. [15]
Amid clashes at some college campuses, following the onset of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war; on November 1st, 2023, Gibson Dunn was one of two dozen law firms that submitted a letter to 14 American law school deans, denouncing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism, and advising those mentoring future law graduates of entrenched workplace policies against harassment or discrimination at their firms. [16] The firm was also one of 17 global law firms that signed a public statement denouncing growing anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S., published in The American Lawyer on May 27, 2021. [17] [18]
Criticism
In 2007, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that Gibson Dunn "acted with actual malice" [57] : 88 [58] in its lawsuit against art expert Steve Seltzer. Seltzer asserted that a painting attributed to Charles Marion Russell was, in fact, the work of his grandfather, Olaf Carl Seltzer, diminishing the painting's value. The Supreme Court concluded that Gibson Dunn sought to use the legal system to intimidate Seltzer, which "amounts to legal thuggery". [57] : 92 [58] The Court upheld the $9.9 million punitive damage award to Seltzer that was initially awarded in 2005, but was appealed by both sides. [59] [58]
Gibson Dunn has been criticized for its pro bono representation in Haaland v. Brackeen seeking to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act. [60] [61] [62] Matthew McGill, a partner at the firm, argued that the Indian Child Welfare Act discriminates against non-Native people who wish to adopt Native children. [61] [63] The United States Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Gibson Dunn's clients 7–2, rejecting all of the challenges either on their merits or for lack of standing. [64]
In 2023, the firm was sanctioned by a San Francisco District Court and ordered to pay $925,000 for its efforts to make the litigation unnecessarily expensive and difficult for the plaintiffs in a consumer privacy lawsuit for the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The judge found that Gibson Dunn engaged in a "sustained, concerted, bad-faith effort to throw obstacle after obstacle in front of the plaintiffs" to push them to settle. [65]
In 2024, ProPublica published an expose, '"The Law Firm Helping Big Oil Weaponize the First Amendment", characterizing Gibson Dunn as "'playing both sides' of free speech, using it to defend fossil fuel companies and silence the industry's critics" [53] It has filed numerous lawsuits against industry critics, [54] and litigated for numerous fossil fuel companies, including the American Petroleum Institute; Energy Transfer; Enbridge; ConocoPhillips; Occidental; [54] and Chevron, in its long-running, $27 billion environmental dispute in Ecuador. [66] [67]
US$3.60 billion (2024) [4] 