The firm recently secured a complete victory over a dangerous and relentless adversary in the District of Delaware. In 2008, our client Ray Mirra, an entrepreneur in the specialty pharmaceutical industry, entered into a separation agreement with his business partner Gigi Jordan, which resulted in Ms. Jordan receiving $50 million. Two years later, Ms. Jordan killed her 10-year-old autistic son in a suite at the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan by force-feeding him a mimosa cocktail laced with an extreme dose of painkillers. Ms. Jordan was quickly arrested for the crime and put on trial in Manhattan. In concocting her criminal defense at trial, Ms. Jordan formed an outrageous narrative that she had killed her son due to an extreme emotional disturbance caused by her belief that Mr. Mirra and all of their former joint business associates had formed a racketeering enterprise for the purpose of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from her, and that Mr. Mirra was trying to kill her to cover up the theft. She would later tell this tale to Dr. Phil and the New York Daily News (among other media outlets), harming Mr. Mirra’s good name on the way to her ultimate conviction for killing her son. Also in the process of spreading this lie, she filed a $250 million federal RICO complaint against Mr. Mirra and several of his companies and employees.
Quinn Emanuel moved to dismiss this baseless—though potentially devastating—RICO suit in September 2014. The firm’s argument centered around the theory that if Ms. Jordan had actually been defrauded (which she had not), the schedules of assets in the business separation agreement should have excited “storm warnings” sufficient to put Ms. Jordan on inquiry notice of her claims in early 2008, triggering the statute of limitations period. While this theory would ultimately be adopted by the district court when it granted the firm’s motion two years later, the parties were ordered to proceed with discovery in the meantime. What followed was a battle involving incredible volumes of documents, contentious depositions, and discovery disputes at every turn. Quinn Emanuel prevailed at every aspect of the process, and ultimately built a strong factual record against Ms. Jordan, which allowed the court to comfortably rule on the firm’s motion to dismiss. The motion was granted with prejudice on August 31, 2016, on both statute of limitations grounds and due to the insufficiency of the RICO claims. While Ms. Jordan continues to pursue an appeal, this victory proved to be a tremendous help to Mr. Mirra in both clearing his good name and getting back to what he does best: building businesses that provide life-saving drugs and medical treatment to patients facing rare disorders.