Firm Shortlisted as Finalist for 2019 American Lawyer Industry Awards

October 7, 2019 – Hughes Hubbard has been shortlisted as a finalist in the 2019 American Lawyer Industry Awards for its work on the Crimea arbitrations.

The nomination for Global Litigation/Dispute Resolution of the Year recognizes the firm’s efforts to recover compensation for Ukrainian investors whose businesses and property in Crimea were expropriated by the Russian Federation after its annexation of the peninsula in 2014.

Five other firms were also nominated in this category: McGuireWoods, King & Spalding, Norton Rose Fulbright, Herbert Smith Freehills and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

The awards, to be unveiled on Dec. 4 at a Roosevelt Hotel gala dinner in New York, are focused at the national level, largely around Big Law and in-house departments. They will celebrate lawyers and law firms in the fields of global legal work, innovation, technology, mentorship and client relationships.

HHR has been representing the claimants since 2014 in multiple arbitration proceedings against Moscow under the Ukraine-Russia bilateral investment treaty (BIT), all administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague. Russia refused to participate in the arbitrations until this past summer, but has sought to set aside the awards in the Swiss and Dutch courts.

In May 2018, HHR secured a $159 million award for Everest Estate and 18 other Ukrainian real estate investors, the first award on merits in the Crimea arbitration. This year, the firm won a combined $100 million award for energy companies Ukrnafta – Ukraine’s largest oil company – and Stabil, as well as partial awards on liability, with quantum still to be decided, for PrivatBank and Aeroport Belbek.

HHR previously won jurisdiction rulings in all five of the arbitrations – the first decisions by any international tribunal to apply a bilateral investment treaty to the occupying power in control of territory occupied in defiance of international law.

John Townsend and Jim Boykin lead the HHR Crimea team, which includes Vitaly Morozov, Leon Ioannou, Eleanor Erney, Marina Drapey, Malik Havalic, Alex Bedrosyan, Stijn Winters, and paralegals Svitlana Stegniy and Lauryn Hardy.