Hennessey’s attention to detail provides the winning edge for his clients.
In the Honda Dealership Relations MDL, once pending in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland (Baltimore), the parties produced millions of pages of documents to a warehouse designated by Judge Frederick Motz. Hennessey camped out at this repository for days on end to thoroughly review documents produced by Honda North America.
Two sheets of paper that caused his auto dealer client to be dismissed from the multibillion-dollar lawsuit on statute of limitations grounds.
In administrative proceedings before the Federal Communications Commission’s International Bureau, other law firms had asked the FCC to exercise its discretion to revoke previously assigned Ka-band satellite licenses. Hennessey took the time to actually read the detailed language of the FCC-issued license.
Hennessey informed the FCC that, under the plain language of the license itself, the license was already void, an immediate and cost-saving result for his client.
Hennessey’s month-by-month, day-by-day, and minute-by-minute mastery of events halfway around the world in Kabul, Afghanistan led to the underdog trial victory for his Kuwaiti client in the United States District Court in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Specifically, in a two-day cross examination of the offending defense contractor’s chief witness, Hennessey forced this witness to admit that 1) his company had devised a plan to rob Hennessey’s client of $3 million worth of relocatable building modules before it signed the contract promising to pay for such modules; 2) the United States Army had not, as defendant’s attorneys had claimed, authorized the defendant contractor to use force to seize the modules; 3) contrary to the U.S. military’s rules of engagement, the defendant had threatened to open fire on Afghan Interior Ministry police forces who had responded to the distress call made by Hennessey’s client; and 4) Hennessey’s client had not been negligent in its construction of the modules (defeating the defendant’s $8 million counterclaim).
A unanimous plaintiff’s verdict, entered by the Knoxville jury in favor of his Kuwaiti client after only one day of deliberation.
In a matter pending in the District of Columbia Superior Court’s Probate Court, the Auditor-Master had not only improperly outsourced the audit of his client’s term as an inter vivos trustee to a private accounting firm but had ordered his client to pay the cost of that audit. Hennessey took note of both the confidentiality clause and the incorporation clause of the contract his client was required to sign as part of this payment obligation. After the accounting firm released its audit to the Auditor-Master, Hennessey sued the accounting firm in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for the full value of any liability that might result from proceedings in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Why? Because the private accounting firm, by virtue of the contract it had required Hennessey’s client to sign to guarantee payment, had violated the contract’s boilerplate confidentiality clause and was foreclosed from citing the Auditor-Master’s appointment by virtue of the contract’s incorporation clause.
An early and favorable settlement for Hennessey’s client that not only capped liability but foreclosed additional litigation against other family members.