Tom Gorman’s practice focuses on white collar criminal defense and complex civil litigation, including disputes involving intellectual property, fraud, breach of contract, and antitrust. Mr. Gorman uses his ability to quickly understand complex and often technical issues to help his team rapidly devise a winning solution. For example, in 2012, Mr. Gorman was part of a trial team that won a complete defense judgment against the U.S. Department of Justice in a case in which the government had accused his clients of fraud and sought nearly $1 billion in damages and penalties.
During law school, Mr. Gorman interned for the Northern District of Illinois’ U.S. Attorney’s Office. He also worked as a student-attorney with the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic, representing indigent criminal defendants in federal court. In the course of this work, Mr. Gorman briefed and successfully obtained a reversal of Seventh Circuit precedent in United States v. Reyes-Hernandez, 624 F.3d 405 (7th Cir. 2010)).
Before attending law school, Mr. Gorman worked as a baseball writer and consultant specializing in sabermetric analysis. He later worked for MLB’s outside counsel during Senator George Mitchell’s investigation of performance-enhancing drug use in baseball.
Cases of Note
Non-Practicing Entity v. Technology Manufacturers and Patent Aggregator: When a group of technology companies refused to settle a patent infringement suit on the terms plaintiff demanded, the plaintiff filed a second suit—this time against the defendants and their defensive patent aggregator—for violation of US antitrust laws. The plaintiff’s novel theory—that defensive patent-aggregation represents a monopsony “buyer’s cartel”—would have threatened the concept of patent aggregators as a whole. Along with our co-defendants, we filed a motion to dismiss attacking plaintiff’s theory and were able to secure an early and very favorable settlement for our client. The court later granted the motion to dismiss as to the remaining defendants.
United States v. McKesson Corporation: We defeated the government’s six-year False Claims Act case against McKesson Corporation and one of its subsidiaries. The government had sought nearly a billion dollars in penalties and damages based on allegations that a McKesson subsidiary submitted “legally false” Medicare insurance reimbursement claims by violating Medicare supplier standards and charging less than fair-market value for billing services in exchange for product sales. We first secured a dismissal of the Qui Tam Relator who initiated this case, a decision that the Fifth Circuit affirmed on appeal. We then won summary adjudication on all claims relating to alleged violations of Medicare supplier standards. Finally, after a three-week bench trial, we prevailed on all remaining claims at trial.
Plaintiff v. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company: We represent TSMC, the world’s largest contract semiconductor manufacturer, in a multi-patent case with Ziptronix in the Northern District of California. Ziptronix, a North Carolina company that claims to have invented various methods of bonding and processing two or more silicon wafers together, brought suit originally, and TSMC counterclaimed asserting a number of its own patents in this same technical field. The technology relates to methods used to manufacture image sensors for digital cameras.
Publications
“Fast-Track Sentencing Disparity: Rereading Congressional Intent to Resolve the Circuit Split,” 77 U. Chi. L. Rev. 479 (2010) (cited by United States v. Reyes-Hernandez, 624 F.3d 405, 412 (7th Cir. 2010) and United States v. Jimenez-Perez, 659 F.3d 704, 706 (8th Cir. 2011)
Awards and Honors
University of Chicago Law School
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Kirkland and Ellis Scholar
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Order of the Coif
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Articles editor, The University of Chicago Law Review
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Vice president, Chicago Law Foundation
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Representative, American Constitution Society
Columbia University
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King’s Crown Gold Crown Leadership Award