OUR STORY
Gibbons is known as a “go-to” law firm in New Jersey for public and private sector clients engaging in trailblazing projects, transactions, and litigation with statewide implications. To guide the innovators who drive the state’s economy, Gibbons has to be equally innovative with its legal and client services. Some creative solutions we have recently crafted for some of New Jersey’s key thought leaders are described here.
Patrick C. Dunican Jr. Chairman and Managing Director
- One of the country’s leading power producers recently designed and built a work-in-place laboratory mirroring its entire grid, which enables its collaboration with various parties to adapt, test, and analyze, in a laboratory environment, technological advancements and power grid enhancements prior to implementation into the actual grid. This project was the first of its kind in the nation. Gibbons, representing the power producer, played a key role by creating unique multiparty, multimember data licenses to build the laboratory, facilitating the robust exchange of confidential data among 15 different organizations while protecting the various members and heightening the laboratory’s effectiveness.
- A leading international boutique law firm engaged Gibbons to create a joint venture connecting lawyers and nonlawyer professionals with one of the premier global consulting and accounting firms. This combination of two major categories of professionals that have not traditionally forged global relationships was motivated by significant new market growth opportunities that have arisen thanks to changing rules governing the way lawyers, accountants, and other consultants can work together. Creating this relationship required in-depth navigation of the existing rules of the respective professional areas and merging them into a single, visionary joint venture that received national attention.
- Representing the New Jersey Legislature in connection with laws to permit wagering on sporting events in casinos and racetracks, Gibbons helped make way for legal sports betting throughout the U.S. After various sports leagues—the NCAA, NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB—sued to enjoin implementation of these laws, Gibbons presented an innovative defense seeking to declare unconstitutional the federal law the sports leagues claimed the legislation violated. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in a groundbreaking decision, decided in favor of the defendants. The New Jersey bill became state law, and several other states are poised to follow suit.
- Gibbons worked closely with a life sciences client to obtain approval for a pioneering “abuse-deterrent opioid,” a first for the industry. As part of this process, Gibbons assessed a long list of interested parties with builtin conflicts of interest among them, in order to create a custom internal governance policy with consistent standards among the parties. This governance policy ultimately enabled the historic approval of this cutting-edge product.
- An early-stage rideshare services innovator approached Gibbons with a soon-to-be-granted patent application. Gibbons immediately recognized the application’s weak claims and vulnerability to capture rights within the rideshare security space, including ADA requirements. Gibbons modified the application in a realistic, market-wise way. The new application significantly boosted the client’s intellectual property protections and prospects, particularly in light of recent public outcry about passenger safety in rideshare vehicles.
- Gibbons represents numerous innovative clients that are investing billions of dollars to transform New Jersey’s cities and brownfields, using public-private partnerships and creative financing to achieve results that are literally and figuratively groundbreaking: bringing market-rate housing back to downtown Newark with the first new residential high-rise building in years; reviving tourism in Asbury Park with the first new hotel in decades; constructing the first new multifamily housing project in Atlantic City on a property cleared for redevelopment but left vacant for over fifty years; and planning the construction of a new community on one of the state’s most complex brownfields.
With its Newark headquarters and offices in Trenton and Red Bank, Gibbons has a prominent statewide presence to base operations when helping to execute some of the most significant corporate transactions, real estate projects, lobbying initiatives, and wide-ranging litigations in New Jersey.
