Delaware Supreme Court. I got to watch
how they interacted with their clients.”
Williams started out with the firm’s
general litigation group. One of his first
assignments was a Freedom of Information
Act case against his old school district. On
behalf of Delaware’s The News Journal, he
was fighting to obtain salary information
for district officials.
“I knew some of those administrators,” he
says. “I had been an anonymous kid and was
now representing the newspaper that had
been delivered to my home my entire life.”
He was still a young associate, not even
30, when he got to see T. Boone Pickens
in action. The cases involving Pickens
were some of the most monumental in all
of corporate litigation history, including
Unocal Corp. v. Mason Petroleum Co., which
established that the Delaware courts
will uphold directors’ actions in a hostile
takeover attempt “as long as those actions
are reasonable,” says Williams, who was
writing briefs, helping senior directors with
depositions and “just doing anything that
had to be done.”
“Things moved so quickly, it was like you
were constantly putting out fires. Many
days, you worked on little or no sleep,” he
says. “At one point, we received a favorable
ruling from the court. Charlie Richards
sent me back immediately to the office
to call Boone Pickens and his team and
deliver the news. I called and Boone and
his team were ecstatic. We eventually lost
on appeal, but it was a hard and well-
fought litigation. Watching Charlie and Gil
Sparks from Morris Nichols go at it was like
watching Ali-Frazier—Charlie and Gil were
heavyweights at the top of their games.”
Then there was Moran v. Household
International, Inc., which established the
“poison pill” clause that would prevent
hostile takeovers. “You certainly had a sense
that you were part of a historical trial,” he
says. “I was a young associate working with
some of the greatest lawyers in the world,
George Katz and Michael Schwartz of
Wachtell and Charlie. It was exciting times.”
He learned early on what it took to
present a strong case. “We had highly
coordinated teams; we were a well-oiled
machine,” he says. “You’d pass the ball and
knew someone would be there to catch it.”
Attorney Eric Roth of Wachtell Lipton
worked with Williams on the Household
case. “Notwithstanding his relative youth,
he had very sound judgment,” he says.
“We worked together from time-to-time,
but the case that really stands out is
Valassis Communications, Inc. v. ADVO,
Inc.,” in which Valassis claimed that it had
been defrauded by ADVO in a takeover
attempt. Ultimately, the companies settled
and merged to create the largest media
services provider in the U.S. at that time.
“Greg did an extremely effective cross-examination of Bob Recchia, the chief
financial officer of Valassis,” Roth says,
“which proved that a lot of the things they
were complaining about was stuff they
already knew.
“Any litigator’s stock and trade is the ability
to convince a judge and jury,” says Roth.
“Greg today is one of the leading corporate
litigators in Delaware, which makes him one
of the leading corporate litigators anywhere.
He’s on anybody’s short list.”
Williams’ most public trial came in
2005, when he was part of the team that
represented the outside directors of The Walt
Disney Co. Stockholders had claimed Disney
breached its fiduciary duties by allowing
controversial president Michael Ovitz to walk
away with a golden parachute. “It was one of
the longest trials in Chancery Court history,
2½ months,” he says. “It was a fascinating
experience for me to see some of these
people—people like [then-CEO] Michael
Eisner and Senator George Mitchell, Tom
Murphy, then president of ABC for a long
time, and Dave McBride, co-defense counsel.”
Williams says he found Ovitz “intense
and fascinating. I watched him testify, and
I could completely understand why the
board hired him, and why he and Eisner
could not coexist.”
William Chandler, the former Delaware
Court of Chancery judge who oversaw the
Disney trial, was impressed with Williams.
“Lawyers are under a great deal of pressure,
especially during that trial, and some
didn’t make it, but Greg was even-keeled,”
Chandler says. “He was very good at getting
witnesses to tell their stories, everyone from
Roy Disney to Sidney Poitier.”
Williams took the media frenzy with a
grain of salt. “In the first day or two, all
the lawyers on the defense side drove over
on a shuttle bus and went to Georgetown
where the trial was held. When we came
off of the bus, there were photographers
taking pictures, which we all thought was
hilarious because we weren’t celebrities.”
In 2010, he represented the directors
