Davis Polk partner and White Collar Defense & Investigations practice co-head Greg Andres and partners Tony Perez-Marques and Micah Block were featured as the AmLaw Litigation Daily’s “Litigators of the Week” for securing a victory at trial for Meta and WhatsApp and a jury verdict ordering NSO Group to pay over $167 million for its 2019 spyware attack targeting WhatsApp.

The jury’s verdict marks another landmark in a case originally filed in October 2019, after Meta and WhatsApp engineers discovered a sophisticated exploit attacking WhatsApp’s servers in May 2019. Meta and WhatsApp identified NSO Group as the source of the attack, and determined that NSO‘s victims included journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents and others.

The jury trial, which was to decide the amount of damages that NSO Group owed Meta and WhatsApp, began on April 28, 2025 in Oakland, California. The six-day trial included groundbreaking testimony from NSO Group executives, who admitted that they used WhatsApp to install spyware on the mobile devices of up to tens of thousands of individuals, and continued to use WhatsApp to install spyware even after WhatsApp and Meta filed their complaint. The jury awarded Meta and WhatsApp the full cost of their employees’ response to the May 2019 attacks. The jury also found that NSO Group acted with malice, oppression, or fraud in violating the CDAFA, and awarded over $167 million in punitive damages.  

In a Q&A with AmLaw, Greg explained what was at stake in the case. “We represented the plaintiffs WhatsApp and Meta in this litigation. At stake was their ability to protect the privacy of WhatsApp users’ communications in the first instance, and to prevent malicious actors from targeting their platform and their users. Privacy is at the core of WhatsApp’s mission and is the reason that WhatsApp provides industry-leading encryption. This case was about holding NSO accountable and sending a message to NSO and others in their industry that the consequences for those who target U.S. companies for these unlawful purposes will be severe, and that WhatsApp’s world-class infrastructure is meant for connecting friends and families and is off-limits for spyware makers and other bad actors.”

Notably, there were a number of challenges that came up around the production of the Pegasus source code in the litigation. Tony told AmLaw, “Getting robust discovery from a foreign spyware company whose entire business is cloaked in secrecy and relies on the active concealment of its work was among the most challenging aspects of this case. Although NSO failed to produce certain discovery (including the code for its Pegasus spyware) in violation of the court’s orders and was sanctioned as a result, we were ultimately successful in that effort, obtaining sufficient discovery for the court to conclude as a matter of law that NSO was liable on all claims and for the jury to recognize NSO’s conduct as malicious, oppressive and fraudulent.”

The case marks the first jury verdict against a commercial spyware company in U.S. court, and is the first U.S. verdict against NSO Group, which was added to the Department of Commerce Entity List for activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States in November 2021.  The case is also the largest ever reported verdict in a civil case brought under either the CFAA or the CDAFA. 

When asked what he would remember most about working on the case, Micah said, “I’ll most remember how this case rewarded patience, focus and persistence. We faced down myriad procedural obstacles and discovery barriers to get this case to trial and hold NSO accountable. Credit for that goes first to the patient and courageous team at WhatsApp and Meta who led overall strategy and trusted us with this assignment, and next to the steadfast and extremely effective team at Davis Polk—especially the counsel and associates who lived and breathed this case for years.”

Many Davis Polk attorneys and staff played key roles throughout the case, including counsel Gina Cora, Craig T. Cagney and Andrew Yaphe, associates Esther C. Townes, Luca Marzorati, Muhammad Sardar, Gersham Johnson, Quentin J. Ullrich, Amelia Birnie, Kaitlin Campanini, Meenu Mathews and Cyerra Haywood, law clerks Tyler Conroy and Thomas Floyd and senior paralegal Felicia Yu.

“Litigators of the Week: Spyware-Maker NSO Group Hit With $168M Verdict for Hacking WhatsApp,” AmLaw Litigation Daily (May 9, 2025) 

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