David Hanselman Jr., Chelsea Black, Raymond Jacobsen Jr. and Nicole Castle, along with lawyers from four other firms, are defending a group of drywall manufacturers against ongoing multidistrict price-fixing litigation. The companies have urged a Pennsylvania federal judge to deny a motion for adding new class representatives to the suit.

M. Miller Baker, Stephen Kranz, and Diann Smith are among the counsel representing a group of oil companies in ongoing litigation with the District of Columbia over transfer pricing tax issues. A court of appeals vacated a summary judgment in favor of the companies and remanded the case back to the DC Office of Administrative hearings for further proceedings.

Diann Smith said that tax professionals who draft or amend tax legislation should use existing models, because this is “not a quick process, so it has to be something that you are willing to wait some time for, and … there will be different stakeholders that are going to be involved.” Stephen Kranz agreed that “having preamble or findings language does help flesh out the intent and purpose of legislation” since tax professionals “are keenly interested in substantive clarity and getting an answer that accurately reflects what the stakeholders were seeking to achieve.”

Jeffrey Brennan, Jon Dubrow, Joel Grosberg, Raymond Jacobsen and Bilal Sayyed were authors of a report cited in this article regarding increased antitrust regulators’ scrutiny of big merger transactions. “If a transaction is likely to create customer concern, it has much higher odds of being challenged and blocked,” the authors wrote, urging companies to get second and third opinions and have buyers up-front who can back up an antitrust remedy proposal.

Matthias Kampshoff leads the McDermott Düsseldorf office team advising German auto supplier Kemmerich and its three related companies, which filed for bankruptcy in early June. Other team members focusing on insolvency and restructuring matters include Marc Oberhardt, Ulrike Witt and Philipp Kutscher. Read the full article.

Emmanuelle Trombe, Anthony Paronneau and Raphaëlle Monjou advised French biopharmaceutical company Inventiva on a collaboration and licensing partnership agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim to develop a new exploratory treatment against idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Leigh Martinson, Sarah Chapin Columbia, Russell Hayman and Jon Dean submitted to a Texas federal judge the supplemental brief the judge had requested, analyzing whether a mobile email patent decision in favor of client Blackberry is invalidated by the Federal Circuit’s subsequent ruling in a similar case.

Jan Huckel headed McDermott’s international corporate, employment and tax team that advised Heico Holding on acquiring 100% of Wistra GmbH. The team included Scott Williams (Chicago); Thomas Ammermann, Catharina Dickhäuser, Sebastian Bonk, Volker Teigelkötter, Thomas Gennert (Düsseldorf); Gero Burwitz (Munich) and Nina Siewert (Frankfurt). Read the full article.

Thomas Sauermilch, Brian Hoffmann, Elissa Port, Meir Lewittes, Diane Morgenthaler, Maureen O’Brien, Daphne Trotter, Raymond Jacobsen, Joel Grosberg, Andrea Hamilton and Daniel Zucker composed the multinational team that provided corporate, benefit, antitrust, regulatory and tax advice to German chemicals company Evonik Industries AG in purchasing Air Products and Chemicals Inc.’s performance materials division for $3.8 billion.