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A@ 3G9GEF $"") Sullivan & Cromwell partner Steven Thomas and four members
of his trial team passed up the five-star culinary options of Miami’s South
Beach for dinner at a Denny’s in Coral Gables. It was an odd place for a
gathering of high-powered lawyers. But Thomas, who was raised in Carl
Junction, a small town with no stop lights in southwestern Missouri, was
not a typical Am Law 100 partner. Throughout the case, he took pleasure
in introducing his team members to chain restaurants in South Florida,
says colleague Emily Alexander.
And Thomas had more than 100 million reasons to savor the pancakes,
scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and grits of his Grand Slam. After a four-month trial, a six-person Florida state court jury had just awarded $170 million in compensatory damages to his client, Banco Espirito Santo, S.A. The
Portuguese bank had sued Chicago-based BDO Seidman, LLP—the U.S.
unit of the world’s fifth-largest accounting firm, BDO Global Coordination
B.V.—claiming the firm had bungled the audits of a corrupt Espirito Santo
subsidiary. The next day, the jury awarded $351.7 million in punitive damages to Espirito Santo. That brought BDO’s total liability to $521.7 million,
the largest verdict ever against a U.S. accounting firm.
But just as Sullivan & Cromwell partners don’t usually find themselves dining at Denny’s, they don’t usually find themselves sitting at
the plaintiffs table suing major accounting firms, as Thomas had. Nor
do they do so on partial contingency, as did Thomas against BDO. At a
firm that usually defends America’s corporate elite, Thomas’s victory was,
well, awkward. The end result was acceptable—while Thomas and S&C
