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Susman Godfrey: Born Inside a Small Maritime Firm, Now Home to a $787.5 Million Dominion-Fox News Win

Origin and Background

Stephen Susman clerked for Fifth Circuit Judge John R. Brown and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black — a biography of Black later revealed Susman was the first clerk Black trusted to draft opinions for him — before joining a large Houston firm and taking a year’s leave to teach law at the University of Texas. In 1976, Susman set up a plaintiffs’ commercial litigation practice inside a small Houston maritime firm, Mandell & Wright, and in 1980 formally founded Susman Godfrey with Gary McGowan and, in 1982, H. Lee Godfrey, built specifically around the then-novel idea of handling large commercial cases on contingency — a business model largely confined to personal-injury work at the time. Susman died in 2020 after more than 50 years trying cases; the firm he built has grown to more than 200 partners and associates across Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle, now led by managing partners Kalpana Srinivasan and Vineet Bhatia.

Practice Concentration

Susman Godfrey is a litigation-only boutique — the firm has no formal practice-group departments, and every attorney is a trial lawyer capable of handling any commercial matter for either plaintiffs or defendants. Its practice spans antitrust, arbitration, bankruptcy, general business disputes, class actions, employment, energy, environmental, intellectual property, shareholder, and securities litigation, representing blue-chip clients including Chevron, General Electric, KKR, NBCUniversal, Uber, and Walmart, alongside consumers, whistleblowers, and startups challenging larger corporate defendants. See this Houston Business Litigation directory for how this litigation-only boutique compares to other commercial litigation firms serving Harris County.

Notable Work / Track Record

In 1980, Susman’s team won what was then the largest antitrust verdict in U.S. history in the Corrugated Container Antitrust litigation, a price-fixing case against 37 container manufacturers that settled for $550 million — then the largest class-action settlement in U.S. history. Susman personally later secured a $1.1 billion settlement on behalf of Texas Instruments and a $536 million jury verdict in El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. GHR Energy Corp. More recently, the firm won a historic $787.5 million settlement for Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against Fox News in 2023, one of the largest defamation settlements in U.S. history. Case outcomes in complex commercial litigation depend heavily on the specific facts involved, and past results do not guarantee similar outcomes in any other case.

Client Voice

Awesome Attorneys did not identify a public consumer-review presence for Susman Godfrey, consistent with a litigation-only boutique whose clients are exclusively corporate, institutional, or class-action parties rather than individual consumers. Following Stephen Susman’s death, Susman Godfrey Houston partner Katie Sammons and Seattle partner Parker Folse III both offered public tributes describing his mentorship and leadership — internal firm perspectives rather than independent client reviews, disclosed as such here.

Beyond the Courtroom

Susman co-founded the Civil Jury Project at NYU School of Law, an initiative focused on preserving and studying the American civil jury trial system, reflecting a documented personal commitment beyond the firm’s commercial caseload. The firm has also taken on pro bono matters including representation of a Native Alaskan coastal village in climate-change litigation against major oil companies and utilities.

Recognition for This Houston Business Litigation Firm

Susman Godfrey had 24 lawyers recognized in the 2025 Lawdragon 500 — more than any other litigation firm that year — and seven partners named to Benchmark Litigation’s 2025 “40 and Under” Hot List. The firm was chosen by the American Lawyer as one of the top two litigation boutiques in the country in 2005, and Stephen Susman himself was named one of Texas Super Lawyers’ Top 10 Texas lawyers every year from 2003 to 2013. Awesome Attorneys did not identify a Texas Board of Legal Specialization certification individually attributed to the firm’s current managing partners, so “specialist” language is not applied to this profile, consistent with house policy reserving that term for genuine TBLS certification.

Texas Legal Backdrop

Most Texas breach-of-contract claims carry a four-year limitations period, while fraud and breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims — central to much of the firm’s shareholder and business-tort work — are separately subject to a four-year period under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 16.004. Defamation claims, the basis of the firm’s Dominion-Fox News matter, carry a one-year limitations period under Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 16.002, though that case was litigated in Delaware rather than Texas. Antitrust claims brought under Texas’s Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act carry a distinct limitations and remedies framework from federal Sherman Act claims. None of this is legal advice; a specific business dispute should be evaluated by a licensed attorney based on the actual facts involved.

Awesome Attorneys Assessment

Susman Godfrey’s clearest differentiator is a genuinely unique business model — a litigation-only firm built from the ground up on contingency and alternative fee arrangements, producing one of the deepest track records of nine- and ten-figure verdicts and settlements of any firm in the country, from the 1980 Corrugated Containers case through the 2023 Dominion-Fox News settlement. The honest trade-off is scale and case selection: as a firm built for genuinely bet-the-company litigation on both sides of the largest disputes in the country, Susman Godfrey is not structured for smaller or routine commercial matters, and a business with a modest dispute will find little fit here regardless of the firm’s reputation. For a company or plaintiff facing a genuinely high-stakes commercial dispute where contingency or alternative fee structures are relevant, Susman Godfrey’s four-decade record of landmark verdicts is a reasonable basis for a shortlist.

Methodology and Sourcing

This profile was researched from Susman Godfrey’s own website, including its firm history and “Why Susman Godfrey” pages and Stephen Susman’s memorial biography page; Vault’s firm profile; Super Lawyers’ tribute article following Susman’s death; and Wikipedia’s and Grokipedia’s biographical entries on Stephen Susman, cross-referenced against the firm’s own published history.

Publisher Disclosure and Independence Notice

Awesome Attorneys is an independent legal directory and editorial publication. This profile was not paid for, commissioned, or reviewed by Susman Godfrey L.L.P. prior to publication. Awesome Attorneys may in the future offer sponsored placement products to attorneys and firms, including this one, but sponsorship has no bearing on the editorial content, inclusion, or findings of this profile.