Cooley successfully represented P. David Newsome, Jr., the liquidating trustee of the Mahalo Energy (USA), Inc. bankruptcy estate, in a critical appeal before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals reversed, in part, the lower court's decision in Newsome v. Gallache and remanded the proceedings to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma.

The decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals represents a key victory for the creditors of the Mahalo bankruptcy estate. From a legal perspective the decision is significant because it (1) clarified the analysis that should be used in determining the locus of the harm in breach of fiduciary duty actions for purposes of determining personal jurisdiction, (2) recognized the use of conspiracy allegations in rendering multiple defendants subject to jurisdiction as a group, and (3) clarified a lingering ambiguity in the law, specifically whether a plaintiff must prove a prima facie case for causation when asserting that personal jurisdiction exists under the purposeful availment doctrine.

The Court further clarified that the fiduciary shield doctrine does not exist as a federal common law principle, but only exists to the extent it is expressly adopted by applicable state law. The Court noted, however, that federal common law incorporates a "no-imputed-contacts" rule and that this rule, which is distinct, is often improperly conflated with the fiduciary shield doctrine.

William B. Federman and Joshua D. Wells of Federman & Sherwood also advised on the litigation.

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