I read Cooley's withdrawal affidavit a little more closely, and noticed this interesting paragraph:
The Cooley attorneys currently noticed in this action are: Alan Levine (alevine@cooley.com), Anthony M. Stiegler (astiegler@cooley.com), David Hillel Kupfer (dkupfer@cooley.com), Laura Grossfield Birger (lbirger@cooley.com), Peter J. Willsey (pwillsey@cooley.com), and Thomas M. Hadid (thadid@cooley.com). Laura Grossfield Birger, Peter J. Willsey, and Thomas M. Hadid are no longer with Cooley. Anthony Stiegler is a retired partner and no longer actively practicing law at Cooley.
Okay, so that's six attorneys:
Alan Levine
Tony Stiegler
David Kupfer
Laura Birger
Peter Willsey
Thomas Hadid
But look what happened? Tony Stiegler retired a long time ago; they just forgot to take him off the case. And three of the remaining five -- Birger, Willsey, and Hadid -- are no longer with Cooley!
So that means there's only two left, Alan Levine and David Kupfer.
What happened to the Cooley team in New York and when did it happen?
Laura Birger just last month accepted a position as Chief of the Criminal Division of the US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York.
Peter Willsey left Cooley last July to become chair of the IP group at BrownRudnick, a big deal firm.
Tom Hadid was an associate on the case, and he left Cooley a year and a half ago to join Kilpatrick Townsend.
Tony Stiegler left the case in February 2018.
That leaves one partner (Alan Levine) and one associate (David Kupfer) at Cooley. So the case wasn't really aggressively staffed anyway. ChromaDex isn't walking a way from a huge amount of institutional knowledge of the case.
I can see, then, why ChromaDex might want to rely on Joedat H. Tuffaha and Prashanth Chennakesavan of LTL Attorneys, who were already on the Covance case, and are now added to both New York and California.