An airline’s hiring of top lawyer David Boies, the chairman of the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, coincided with a 5% hit to CrowdStrike’s stock in trading on Monday.
This comes following an extended IT outage affecting Windows devices using CrowdStrike software that led to global chaos, including at many busy, international airports.
Air Travel Industry Decimation
The CrowdStrike and Microsoft outage caused huge damage to the airline industry as a whole.
The shutdown of millions of Windows devices led to flights being grounded, and thousands of stranded passengers in airports.
Airlines Particularly Hit
Many industries were affected by the sudden loss of function in millions of Microsoft devices caused by the outage, but airlines were particularly badly hit.
Thousands of flights were ultimately cancelled, and airlines’ reputations have been badly hit as passengers saw their travel plans derailed.
Boies Schiller Flexner Law Firm
The Boies Schiller Flexner law firm was founded in 1997, initially as Boies Schiller before the naming of Flexner as a partner in 1999.
It has had a number of notable clients, including Harvey Weinstein, Theranos, and Amazon.
Controversial Lawyers
The firm has been involved in a number of controversies over the years, with Boies himself representing the disgraced blood-testing company, Theranos, for years.
The New Yorker reported that, working under Harvey Weinstein, the firm directed smear campaigns against Weinstein’s alleged sexual assault victims.
Delta’s Legal Intentions
Delta Airlines have now hired Boies, reportedly to seek damages against Crowdstrike and Microsoft.
However, the airline has not yet opened a formal suit against the tech companies.
Only a Threat
Although a formal suit has not been opened, just the threat of one appears to be having a chilling effect on markets.
Through Monday, CrowdStrike shares dropped 5% by the end of trading.
Misery on Misery
This follows an already poor couple of weeks for CrowdStrike stock, which saw large falls following the global IT outage.
In just the space of a couple of days at the height of the outage, Crowdstrike saw a quarter of the value of their stocks wiped.
Impact on Delta
Delta may seek to recoup some of the funds it had to repay irate customers, who continue to seek reimbursements and refunds for cancelled and delayed flights.
The incident has had a substantial monetary consequence for Delta, estimated at $350-500 million worth of losses accrued over such a short period of time.
Fortune 500 Dip
Although airlines were arguably the hardest hit, Fortune 500 companies as a whole were substantially affected by the outage.
Parametrix estimates that the group of companies, together, made a loss of $5.4 billion.
