Geoffrey Harrison

Practice Areas

Antitrust, Business Disputes, Complex Commercial Litigation, Energy

Career

A “rockstar” and “powerhouse litigator.” “Relentless in the courtroom.” That’s what Chambers USA called me in its 2021 and 2020 Guides to America’s Best Lawyers. Lawdragon calls me “One of the great trial lawyers of his generation” and lists me among the 500 Leading Lawyers in America. National Law Journal featured me on its nationwide “Appellate Hot List 2020,” named me an “Energy Litigation Trailblazer” in 2017, and featured me as a “Winning Litigator” in 2016. The Legal 500 lists me among the country’s top lawyers for general commercial disputes and for energy litigation. Best Lawyers in America named me one of the “Best Lawyers in America” for commercial litigation.

For more information on Harrison's career, click here: https://www.susmangodfrey.com/attorneys/geoffrey-l-harrison/

Education

Experience

Judicial Clerk to Honorable Gerald Bard Tjoflat, Eleventh Circuit

Work Highlights

Settled a $100-plus million patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung Electronics on the morning of jury selection in the Western District of Texas. Our client Proxense, LLC’s technology enables biometric authentication on mobile-pay applications like Samsung Pay. We secured favorable Markman rulings, defeated Samsung’s summary judgment motions (including those masquerading as motions in limine), and secured a partial plaintiff-side summary judgment ruling as well. The terms of the settlement are confidential.

Represented energy industry midstream companies in two Oklahoma lawsuits against an EPC contractor for multiple pipelines. The contractor sued for $20 million in withheld retainage and, to prevent a counterclaim, sued the parent/guarantor and not the operating company. We had the operating company sue the contractor for $65 million due to delays, engineering and construction errors, and contract breaches, and persuaded the Court to consolidate the lawsuits based on what the Court called our “analysis and well written response brief.” We defeated the contractor’s motion to dismiss, engaged in extensive discovery, and resolved the dispute on a basis the contractor insisted be kept confidential.

Won a Texas state court trial for a litigation funder private equity firm against a law firm and counsel who disputed the validity and scope of a contract. The court granted the exact declaratory judgment we requested, found that our funder client prevailed on the main issues in the case, and awarded nearly $1 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses plus over $200,000 more on appeal. The win confirmed the validity of our client’s lien on the gross amount of certain attorneys’ fees in connection with over 1,000 Engle and other tobacco cases in Florida courts, and protected our client’s expected receipt of tens of millions of dollars linked to the outcome of the underlying tobacco cases.

Represented a global energy industry company in a confidential executive compensation arbitration and obtained a finding that the executive’s actions “constituted gross misconduct” that the executive “could not have reasonably believed was in the best interests of the company.”

Won a federal court summary judgment for national leasing company Winthrop Resources Corporation against healthcare company Prospect ECHN, Inc. Prospect sued to recover millions in lease payments it had made, sought to avoid paying millions more, and sought to recharacterize the lease agreement into a secured transaction. We counterclaimed for breach of contract. The court rejected Prospect’s claims and request to convert the lease into a secured transaction, found that Prospect breached the lease contract, awarded Winthrop every penny of the $4,824,490.49 in damages we sought plus $582,000 in attorney’s fees and costs. The court called me a “talented litigator” and noted that “Mr. Harrison’s presentation at the motions hearing was effective and very important to Winthrop’s success.”

Served as special litigation counsel for debtor Arena Energy, LP and sought a TRO requiring would-be bidders W&T Offshore and 31 Group to return or destroy all confidential information they improperly obtained from Arena’s virtual data room. Immediately after the TRO hearing, W&T and 31 Group capitulated and signed a settlement agreement granting Arena the relief we sought. At a subsequent evidentiary hearing, the bankruptcy court declared W&T’s conduct “abhorrent to the Court.”

Defended several oil and gas limited partnerships and certain of their owners against two limited partner plaintiffs’ Texas state court lawsuit for breaches of a partnership agreement, breaches of fiduciary duty, and demand for over $100 million in damages. We took over from another law firm, quashed plaintiffs’ discovery requests, and persuaded the court to compel arbitration of all claims. We filed our own arbitration demand, asserted affirmative claims for declaratory and monetary relief, and defeated the limited partners’ contract-based motion for advancement of attorney’s fees. After significant motion practice, the limited partners abandoned all claims and walked away with zero dollars.

Won a multi-million dollar award (100% of damages sought plus fees, costs, and interest) in a confidential technology and construction industry arbitration involving obligations under a written agreement. The parties’ names, location of the project at issue, nature of the dispute, and specifics about the award are confidential.

Argued and won a 3-0 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirming a nearly $50 million judgment in favor of Apache Deepwater LLC against W&T Offshore for W&T’s failure to pay its share of the costs to plug and abandon three deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico. We secured the judgment for Apache by winning a $43.2 million jury verdict after a two week trial in 2016, plus attorney’s fees and interest. W&T also paid Apache $24.8 million shortly after we filed the lawsuit for a gross recovery of nearly $75 million and, after fees and expenses, a net recovery of nearly $63 million. Click here for the Texas Lawyer article on the Fifth Circuit’s decision.

As lead counsel for the City of Houston, secured a $40 settlement payment from actuarial firm Towers Watson & Co. to resolve the City’s federal court allegations of negligence and negligent misrepresentation arising out of actuarial work on benefits changes for one of the City’s pension funds.

As lead counsel for a SunPower Corporation Systems, settled a $75 million lawsuit in California state court against a major energy company arising out of a construction and financing agreement for the development of a large-scale solar energy power plant. The dispute involved the parties’ rights, indemnity obligations, and financial exposure in connection with a multi-hundred million dollar shortfall in the amount of anticipated funding from the federal government.

Settled a $20 million breach of contract lawsuit over a project to expand the capacity of a chemical plant. Our client alleged that the contractor, a global engineering services and construction company, breached the engineering and procurement contract by failing to meet industry and contractual standards and failing to comply with warranties.

Won a $43.2 million federal court jury verdict and $48.7 million final judgment for Apache Deepwater LLC against W&T Offshore based on W&T’s failure to pay its share of the costs to plug and abandon three deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Apache’s $48.7 million judgment comes on top of a $24.8 million partial payment W&T made 2 ½ months after Apache filed this lawsuit, making Apache’s potential gross recovery about $75 million including interest. This was one of the top 100 Verdicts of 2016.

Argued and won a 3-0 decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirming the district court’s judgment in favor of Apache Corporation and against W&T Offshore. The appeal arose out the jury’s verdict and the court’s partial summary judgment in favor of Apache, rejecting W&T’s $20 million claim for misallocation of offshore oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. We won the jury’s verdict, won the court’s judgment, won the appeal, and recovered over $100,000 in court costs from W&T.

Argued and won a 3-0 decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that a $122.9 million court judgment from the Kingdom of Morocco is worthy of recognition and enforcement in Texas against billionaire John Paul DeJoria. The Fifth Circuit rejected DeJoria’s multiple attacks on the Morocco judgment and held that DeJoria failed to meet his burden of proving non-recognition under Texas’s Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act. After we won in the Fifth Circuit, DeJoria lobbied the Texas legislature to change the law and apply it retroactively to his case and, under the new Act, escaped liability.

Won a $19.4 million award (100% of damages sought, plus interest) in a confidential energy industry arbitration involving obligations under a joint operating agreement.

Won a three week jury trial for the City of Houston against a group of plaintiffs seeking to repeal Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance (“HERO”) which prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy. The jury found that 64 out of 97 petition circulators failed to comply with the legal requirements in the City Charter—exactly as we asked the jury to find—and found that 12 of the 13 circulators who gathered the most signatures submitted pages with forgeries and false oaths. Sadly, the voters rejected the ordinance months later.