US: Quinn Emanuel joins Uber rival case

Lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan are fighting an attempt by their former client, Uber, to disqualify the firm from pursuing antitrust claims against it by a former rival ride-hailing app, reported Law.com.

Uber’s current lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher filed a motion in February to disqualify Quinn Emanuel from representing SC Innovations, the successor to the defunct Sidecar ride-sharing company. Uber contends that Quinn Emanuel represented it in at least 20 cases from 2012 to 2016 that delved into competition issues like the Sidecar case. The company also claimed that Quinn Emanuel lawyers had access to confidential Uber information.

But in opposition papers filed March 15, Quinn Emanuel lawyers said that there was no evidence that the firm’s prior work for Uber was “substantially related” to its work for Sidecar and that the firm has never been in possession of confidential information that would bar its participation in the antitrust suit against Uber.

“When the actual evidence is examined, the only reasonable conclusion is there is no basis to deprive Sidecar of its chosen counsel,” wrote the Quinn lawyers, including Robert Feldman and Claude Stern in the firm’s Redwood Shores, California, office, and Ethan Glass and Michael Bonanno in Washington, DC.

The Quinn Emanuel lawyers filed suit on behalf of Sidecar’s successor late last year, claiming that Uber is a “monopolist” in the ride-hailing market. They claimed that Uber stole Sidecar’s business model and “intentionally sustained near-term losses that were designed to drive Sidecar out of the market while Uber acquired a dominant market position.”