Colleen R. Smith

Colleen serves as lead plaintiffs’ counsel in this mass action against the operators of a Los Angeles County landfill whose negligence and misconduct have exposed thousands of nearby residents to hazardous chemicals, through gas emissions and wastewater since 2022. Colleen drafted the lead complaint—which has been adopted by every other firm in the litigation—and successfully defended plaintiffs’ allegations against a motion to dismiss.

Colleen served as one of the lead plaintiffs’ counsel in this class action challenging the legality of a $170 million sale of a St. Louis Casino to an employee stock ownership plan. The vastly inflated sales price doomed the ESOP to failure, leaving the employees with almost nothing, while the wealthy former owners profited substantially. Colleen defeated seven separate dispositive motions before defendants agreed to settle.

Colleen played a central role in securing a preliminary injunction for several Idaho doctors that enjoined the Attorney General of Idaho from enforcing Idaho’s abortion statute as criminalizing the practice of referring patients for legal, out-of-state abortions. In this case of first impression, the District of Idaho declared such an interpretation of Idaho law likely violates the First Amendment rights of the healthcare providers. Colleen helped successfully defend the preliminary injunction on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

Colleen has served a crucial role in securing multiple victories for industrial-scale bitcoin miner Rhodium in this make-or-break dispute with its landlord over the alleged termination of hosting contracts valued in the hundreds of millions that has spanned multiple forums. Colleen drafted nearly every key brief in advance of a successful week-long trial in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The Court’s post-trial order adopted significant portions of the summary judgment briefing Colleen carefully crafted on Rhodium’s behalf.

Colleen successfully briefed and argued this Second Circuit appeal, reviving retirees’ ERISA claims against IBM over its use of a long-outdated mortality table to calculate joint and survivor annuities.

Colleen’s brief writing helped convince a Ninth Circuit panel to withdraw two successive decisions, grant panel rehearing, and issue a favorable opinion that revived ERISA breach of fiduciary duty claims brought on behalf of 60,000 individuals who were denied mental health and substance abuse benefits covered by Defendant’s health insurance plans.

Colleen played a central role in the certiorari fight in this case, which presented a significant question about the arbitrability of ERISA representative actions. Facing an elite Supreme Court team and despite the predictions of industry watchers, Colleen helped persuaded the Court to deny certiorari.

Colleen Successfully blocked Novartis’s emergency motion to stay and petition for certiorari seeking review of Federal Circuit’s ruling that Novartis’s patent on a multiple sclerosis drug failed the written description requirement.

Colleen served as lead drafter in this significant Fifth Circuit appeal presenting consequential questions about the enforceability of individual arbitration agreements in representative actions brought under ERISA. Shortly after oral argument, the case settled.