May 14 (Reuters) - Video sharing platform Rumble is
adding famed litigator David Boies to its trial team in a
federal lawsuit accusing Alphabet's Google of suppressing online
video competition, a court filing showed.
Boies will work with a group of attorneys from law firm
Cadwalader, including Nicholas Gravante Jr, a former longtime
colleague of Boies at his firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
Rumble in 2021 sued Google for more than $2 billion in
damages in the Oakland, California, federal court, accusing it
of monopolizing the online video platform market.
The lawsuit said Google rigged user searches to give
preference to Google's YouTube platform over Rumble. It also
accused Google of scheming with device makers to bar Rumble from
being preinstalled on some Android phones.
Boies, Rumble and Google did not immediately respond to
requests for comment. Gravante declined to comment.
Google has denied Rumble's claims and asked U.S. District
Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr to rule for the company and end the
case before trial, which is set for July.
Google's legal team includes Williams & Connolly partner
John Schmidtlein, who has defended the company in several
high-stakes legal fights.
Boies came to prominence as a lawyer for the U.S. government
in its 1990s landmark antitrust case against Microsoft ( MSFT ), and for
representing Democrat Al Gore in his unsuccessful U.S. Supreme
Court fight with George W. Bush for the presidency in 2000. He
is separately representing plaintiffs suing Google for allegedly
violating consumer privacy.
Gravante practiced at Boies Schiller for more than 20 years
and was a leader of the firm before leaving in 2020 for
Cadwalader. He and Boies also worked together years earlier at
Wall Street firm Cravath.
Some of Gravante's clients included former Trump
Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, and Joe
Biden's son Hunter in an investor dispute.
Cadwalader is one of nine prominent law firms that struck
deals with the Trump White House to avoid a punishing executive
order that threatened to disrupt business operations.
Four other firms that were hit with such orders have sued
the administration.
The case is Rumble v. Google, U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of California, No. 4:21-cv-00229-HSG.
For Rumble: Nicholas Gravante, Philip Iovieno and Danielle
Tully of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; David Boies of Boies
Schiller Flexner; Robert Dickerson Jr of the Competition &
Policy Law Group
For Google: John Schmidtlein and Stephen Fuzesi of Williams
& Connolly, and David Kramer of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
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