Clifford Chance litigator Christopher Morvillo wrote his first LinkedIn post in June, to celebrate the acquittal of his client Mike Lynch after a 12-year legal battle.
“I am so glad to be home”, Morvillo wrote, signing off: “And they all lived happily ever after . . . ”
That turned out to be one of the last posts he would write before a holiday to honour the storming courtroom victory turned to disaster. In the early hours of Monday, the Lynch family’s luxury yacht Bayesian sank in severe weather off Sicily, leaving Morvillo, his wife, Neda, and Lynch among the six missing.
The 59-year-old Morvillo, a member of a renowned dynasty of New York litigators, and fellow Clifford Chance lawyer Ayla Ronald, who was rescued along with her partner, were gathered on the yacht to toast Lynch’s acquittal. For Morvillo, the trip capped more than a decade’s work helping to lead the defence of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud cases.
Morvillo’s role in the case began in 2012, when the former Autonomy chief executive was accused of falsely inflating revenues at the UK software company ahead of its $11bn sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. The long battle that ensued saw Lynch extradited to the US and subjected to house arrest under 24-hour surveillance ahead of the trial.
In a legal podcast released last week, Morvillo said he flew to London to meet Lynch on Thanksgiving weekend in 2012, assuming he would be gone for a week, then “spent a significant portion of the rest of my life bouncing back and forth between London and New York”.
The case has “covered one-third of my career”, he told the For the Defense podcast. “It has been a constant presence in my life for the last 12 years.”
Steptoe senior counsel Reid Weingarten, who worked in tandem for years with Morvillo as part of the entrepreneur’s phalanx of lawyers, told the Financial Times on Tuesday that he was “devastated and shocked” about the tragedy. He called him a “wonderful lawyer” who was “on top of the world” before the trip.
“When the Mike Lynch representation came to me, Clifford Chance was representing [Lynch] in England and I had to decide whether to use Clifford Chance on the American side for the criminal probe,” he added. “I sat down with Chris and immediately fell in love. The rest was history.
“Chris is like my brother, is a wonderful lawyer, and ‘wonderful lawyer’ is the least interesting thing about him,” added Weingarten, who credited the lawyer with the smooth running of the transatlantic co-operation on the case.
Morvillo cut his teeth as a federal prosecutor, working on cases related to the 9/11 attacks and securing the conviction of lawyer Lynne Stewart for assisting terrorism during his time as assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York between 1999 and 2005.
He joined Clifford Chance after leaving the New York trial firm where he worked with his father, white-collar criminal defence attorney Robert Morvillo, renowned for defending Manhattan clients including Martha Stewart in her insider-trading case, and Hank Greenberg, the former AIG boss.
Chris and his brothers Greg, Scott and Robert worked together at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, alongside their father, before his death. Weingarten said the brothers were a “New York Italian family and so fun to be around”.
Alongside his work on Lynch’s trial, Morvillo garnered acclaim in recent years for a precedent-setting defence of UK businessman Lawrence Hoskins, securing his acquittal on US bribery charges after an eight-and-a-half-year case ending in 2022.
Another “magic circle” lawyer who worked with Morvillo said: “As well as being brilliant at what he did — you have Autonomy but also the Hoskins case to show for that — he is the most incredibly friendly, collaborative colleague and partner that you could imagine.
“He’s funny, too. Everyone who has worked with him, and for him, we all love him.”
The families of Chris and Neda Morvillo said they remained hopeful for their safe return: “Chris and Neda are each known for their professional successes, Chris as a distinguished attorney and Neda as a skilled jewellery designer, but their true talent is that of mother and father, son and daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt and friends.”
On Tuesday Clifford Chance said it was “deeply saddened by this tragic incident”, adding: “Our utmost priority is providing support to [Morvillo’s] family as well as our colleague Ayla Ronald, who together with her partner, thankfully survived the incident.
Ronald, who grew up in New Zealand, was part of the Clifford Chance team advising Lynch. She was rescued from the Bayesian along with her partner, Matthew Fletcher.
Speaking to the Telegraph newspaper on Monday, her father, Lin Ronald, said his daughter had been “acting in some fashion as a co-ordinator with the medics”.
He added that his daughter — whose handle on X is aylathesailor — is a keen yachtswoman. “She was brought up on a yacht. I was a cruising sailor and she was almost born on a yacht in Cooktown in Australia. We just managed to get her mother off to hospital just moments before the birth.”
Her X profile currently reads: “Sitting, waiting, wishing”.
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