Rumble hires litigator David Boies in Google antitrust lawsuit ahead of trial

By Mike Scarcella

May 14 (Reuters) - Video sharing platform Rumble is adding famed litigator David Boies to its trial team in a federal lawsuit accusing Alphabet’s Google of suppressing online video competition, a court filing showed.

Boies will work with a group of attorneys from law firm Cadwalader, including Nicholas Gravante Jr, a former longtime colleague of Boies at his firm Boies Schiller Flexner.

Rumble in 2021 sued Google for more than $2 billion in damages in the Oakland, California, federal court, accusing it of monopolizing the online video platform market.

The lawsuit said Google rigged user searches to give preference to Google’s YouTube platform over Rumble. It also accused Google of scheming with device makers to bar Rumble from being preinstalled on some Android phones.

Boies, Rumble and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Gravante declined to comment.

Google has denied Rumble’s claims and asked U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr to rule for the company and end the case before trial, which is set for July.

Google’s legal team includes Williams & Connolly partner John Schmidtlein, who has defended the company in several high-stakes legal fights.

Boies came to prominence as a lawyer for the U.S. government in its 1990s landmark antitrust case against Microsoft, and for representing Democrat Al Gore in his unsuccessful U.S. Supreme Court fight with George W. Bush for the presidency in 2000. He is separately representing plaintiffs suing Google for allegedly violating consumer privacy.

Gravante practiced at Boies Schiller for more than 20 years and was a leader of the firm before leaving in 2020 for Cadwalader. He and Boies also worked together years earlier at Wall Street firm Cravath.

Some of Gravante’s clients included former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, and Joe Biden's son Hunter in an investor dispute.

Cadwalader is one of nine prominent law firms that struck deals with the Trump White House to avoid a punishing executive order that threatened to disrupt business operations.

Four other firms that were hit with such orders have sued the administration.

The case is Rumble v. Google, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 4:21-cv-00229-HSG.

For Rumble: Nicholas Gravante, Philip Iovieno and Danielle Tully of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; David Boies of Boies Schiller Flexner; Robert Dickerson Jr of the Competition & Policy Law Group

For Google: John Schmidtlein and Stephen Fuzesi of Williams & Connolly, and David Kramer of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

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