Transportation

Regulatory

Our lawyers have deep knowledge of the regulation of transportation and have represented clients in a wide range of regulatory matters, including:

• Representing railroad, maritime and airline interests before the Surface Transportation Board, the Federal Maritime Commission, and the Department of Transportation in the United States;
• Representing airline interests before the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Appeals Tribunal in the United Kingdom and the EU Court of Justice;
• Advising on agreements implementing IATA’s “e-Way Bill” initiative for cargo; and
• Advising on global data protection and privacy law compliance by airlines and an airline alliance, including designing a compliance approach for exchange of frequent flier data between alliance members.

Antitrust/Competition Law

The firm represents transportation clients in a wide range of antitrust and competition law matters, including:

• Carrier pricing and marketing practices, inter-carrier agreements, and joint ventures between carriers and suppliers or customers;
• Mergers, acquisitions, and pooling agreements;
• Distribution arrangements, including advice regarding agreements with airline Global Distribution Systems (GDSs); and
• Investigations by the Department of Justice and the EU Commission.

Government Affairs

The firm has provided a broad range of governmental affairs counsel to transportation clients on a variety of significant issues, including:

• Advising railroads on regulatory policy and legislation;
• Providing ongoing legislative counsel to a major airline; and
• Advising clients on highway policy and funding issues.

Insurance

Our top-ranked insurance practice has wide-ranging experiences helping transportation-sector clients worldwide recover insurance for a tremendous variety of losses, and advising them on insurance placements, contractual risk transfer and related issues. Our experience includes:

• Obtaining nine-figure recoveries for railroad losses from catastrophic derailments, accidents and natural catastrophes;
• Representing shippers, cargo interest-holders and resource extraction entities in marine and off-shore insurance disputes (including Exxon on the Valdez grounding);
• Representing global shipping, railroad, trucking and logistics companies in insurance disputes on a range of liabilities from asbestos to Longshore and Harbor Worker's Compensation Act; and grounding);
• Obtaining nine-figure recoveries for FELA claims (Federal Employee Liability Act) against railroads involving a wide range of alleged injuries.
• Advising airlines, railroads, transportation agencies and other entities on property, liability and cyber insurance placements and contractual risk transfer and insurance matters.

Litigation

Our lawyers have substantial experience with transportation-related litigation and arbitration matters, including:

• Litigating antitrust cases, breach of contract cases, customs cases, land use cases, merger-related securities cases, and arbitrations involving joint facility agreements for clients in the rail, airline, and freight forwarding industries in the United States; and
• Handling transportation-related litigation before the European Court of Justice and other European courts.

Transactions/Technology

Our firm has unique knowledge and experience in representing transportation clients in connection with their technology and distribution transactions, including:

• Contracts for large, mission critical IT systems for airlines, including successfully completing negotiations with Amadeus, HP, ITA Software, Google, Lufthansa Systems, and Sabre for reservations, inventory, availability, pricing, and merchandising systems;
• Sales and distribution agreements, such as negotiations with GDSs (Sabre, Amadeus, and Travelport), online travel agencies, metasearch engines, and other intermediaries, and dealing with issues associated with ownership and control of airline data;
• Rewards programs, including participation agreements and points exchange agreements;
• Online advertising agreements, including agreements for search campaigns and affiliate programs; and
• Cloud computing service agreements.