Find Lawyers in Los Angeles, California for Commercial Litigation
Practice Area Overview
Litigation increasingly occurs in various venues, from state and federal courts to private arbitrations and administrative hearings. Proceedings can involve business-to-business disputes or any number of government agencies. Understanding the motivations and outlook of each of the litigation participants is important for determining weak points to exploit and strong points that will persuade the audience in question. During the past decade, commercial litigators have seen a dramatic uptick in multidistrict and inter-disciplinary litigation, making the stakes higher, the cases more complex, the parties more numerous and the discovery more complicated and unwieldy. Firms that are able to develop and implement a creative legal approach to each individual problem, efficiently focus on the key legal and factual issues, and master and manage the various aspects of these complex matters will be the busiest in the years to come.
In the current challenging economic climate, commercial litigators are under increasing client pressure to keep costs in check, which has both sides testing the efficacy of alternative fee arrangements and the scope of reasonable discovery. Whether the “death of the billable hour” is ultimately realized, the keys to a commercial litigator’s success will continue to be strong client relationships, thought leadership, practical management skills, deep experience, and personal commitment.
David Biderman, a partner in Perkins Coie's San Francisco and Los Angeles offices, focuses his practice on mass tort litigation and consumer class actions. He heads the firm's Mass Tort/Toxic Tort Defense group. He has represented a wide variety of companies in state and federal courts in California for 30 years. David currently manages the firm’s full-service product liability team responsible for defending over 1000 toxic tort cases pending in Los Angeles and Northern California state...
Terry Bird has been litigating, trying and winning complicated civil and white collar criminal cases for more than 40 years. He started his trial experience as a federal prosecutor in the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office. Before that, he clerked for Justices Lynn “Buck” Compton and Robert Thompson at the California Court of Appeal. His extensive and successful trial experience in commercial business litigation and white collar criminal prosecutions has been recognized by h...
Karl Block has a broad-based practice in the areas of corporate and corporate restructuring law. In his corporate practice, he represents sponsors, acquirers and targets in a variety of business combinations, acquisitions, financings and divestitures. Mr. Block also counsels with respect to competition, trade secrets and confidentiality. He also counsels boards on corporate governance matters, fiduciary duties and risk management. On the restructuring side of the practice, Mr. Block counsels ...
Kevin Brogan specializes in the trial of real estate and business cases, with a particular emphasis on eminent domain and inverse condemnation matters. He has substantial experience in the trial of jury and nonjury matters in state and federal courts, as well as before administrative tribunals and other forums. He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Chair of its Foundation Board.
As chair of Pachulski Stang Ziehl & Jones’s post confirmation practice group, Mr. Caine oversees the entire spectrum of claims and avoidance litigation for debtors, creditors committees, trustees, liquidation or post-confirmation trusts, and defendants, from “mega cases” to smaller, individual matters. While many lawyers handle this type of work few, if any, can produce outstanding recoveries for all parties by calling upon the same case experience and litigation backgro...
Paul S. Chan is the managing principal of Bird Marella. His practice focuses on the trial and arbitration of complex business disputes, including commercial fraud, class action, securities, and intellectual property litigation. Paul also represents companies and individuals in regulatory and parallel civil/criminal investigations. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College, Paul has particular expertise litigating cases involving the False Claims Act, civil RICO statute, unfair comp...
Chuck Cox uses nearly 25 years of experience to advise companies and their directors on their most challenging business disputes. Chuck is the leader of the Los Angeles Litigation Team and a partner in the Securities Litigation Group. He concentrates his practice on complex business disputes, including securities class actions, derivative litigation, fiduciary duty, and other cases resulting from mergers and acquisitions, corporate control disputes, and commercial litigation. Chuck has tried ...
Mark T. Cramer is a Shareholder in the Los Angeles office and Chair of the Firm’s Class Action Practice Group. Mr. Cramer advises clients ranging from Fortune 50 corporations to start-up companies about how to manage actual and potential business disputes in the context of their overall business goals. He collaborates with clients, their executives, and in-house counsel to formulate and implement customized litigation strategies. For example, where the client’s primary business in...
James E. Curry is a partner in the Entertainment, Technology and Advertising Practice Group in the firm's Century City office. Areas of Practice Mr. Curry has represented companies in commercial trial litigation for 25 years, with an emphasis in the entertainment area. He has represented three of the four U.S. Broadcast television networks, and five of the seven major studios, in addition to a myriad of other entertainment companies. In the television area, he has substantial experience in te...
Jeff Davidson is an accomplished trial lawyer whose cases involve contracts, securities, antitrust, mergers and acquisitions, insurance coverage, intellectual property, products liability, toxic tort, and environmental matters in state and federal courts, in federal administrative proceedings, before AAA and NASD arbitration panels, and before the London Court of International Arbitration. He has tried over 40 cases. Jeff has argued appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court (twice), U.S. Courts o...
Craig de Recat is a partner in the firm’s Los Angeles office. His practice focuses on complex litigation, and he has a wide range of experience handling commercial, environmental, antitrust, insurance, intellectual property, patent/trademark, and related business matter disputes for national and international clients. Craig is an experienced trial attorney often called on to handle trials for high-profile, high-risk or “bet the company” cases. He has also argued numerous app...
Kirk Dillman is a Principal in the Los Angeles office of McKool Smith Hennigan. Mr. Dillman specializes in complex commercial litigation and trial practice, primarily in the areas of finance, securities, energy, real estate, trade secrets, partnership and health care fraud. He joined the firm in 1998 after co-counseling in the successful prosecution of various securities actions arising out of the Orange County bankruptcy. Mr. Dillman has successfully tried numerous complex commercial dispute...
Mark Drooks focuses his practice on civil litigation and arbitration. He has been lead counsel in more than 50 civil trials and arbitrations that have been litigated to final decision and has argued several appeals in state and federal courts, including the California Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Drooks’s practice runs the gamut of commercial litigation. He has substantial experience representing clients in breach of contract and busine...
Brian Glennon is a trial lawyer with an esteemed career spanning over two decades. His successful representations of public companies, accounting firms, and professional services firms and their officers and directors cement Brian as a leading lawyer for securities litigation and accounting defense . Read full biography: https://www.mwe.com/people/glennon-brian-t/
Gordon A. Greenberg regularly represents clients in civil and criminal investigations, as well as in trials and congressional hearings. He has significant experience defending clients in high-stakes, bet-the-company matters that have civil and criminal components. Gordon has more than 30 years of experience handling a wide range of business crime investigations and trials. Read full biography: https://www.mwe.com/people/greenberg-gordon-a/
Mr. Handal is a skilled litigator dedicated to navigating complex business disputes involving Intellectual Property, breaches of fiduciary duty, partnership break-ups, professional liability, product liability, trademark infringement, trade secrets, data breaches, and Lanham Act violations. He has over 40 years of first-chair litigation experience in Federal, State, and Administrative tribunals. He has represented clients from all over the world, tried over 100 matters, and has been lead coun...
Brian Hennigan is Managing Partner at Hueston Hennigan LLP. For the past 20 years, Mr. Hennigan has specialized in complex litigation with an emphasis on white collar criminal defense. Over that time period, he has successfully represented individuals and corporations facing a wide array of challenges presented by federal prosecutors and investigating agencies. More recent representations have included the successful representations of individuals facing allegations under the Foreign Corrupt ...
Mark Holscher is a partner in the Firm's Los Angeles and San Francisco offices and is a member of the Commercial Litigation Practice Group. In the last five years, Mark has obtained plaintiffs verdicts and settlements of over $1.1 billion, with multiple nine figure recoveries. Mark has also successfully defended clients against multiple claims in excess of a billion dollars. Mark’s background as a former Assistant United States Attorney coupled with his successful civil trial record has...
John Hueston has been described by Chambers USA, which ranked him in Band 1 nationally, as “the best trial lawyer of his generation” with “a commanding reputation for trial advocacy.” He has been recognized twice as a “California Lawyer of the Year” by California Lawyer magazine, twice as “California Trial Lawyer of the Year” by Benchmark Litigation, and among the “Top Lawyers of the Decade” by the Daily Journal. Mr. Hueston won &ldq...
Mr. Hufstedler, Senior Of Counsel to Morrison & Foerster, has had an active business, trial and appellate practice for over 50 years. Mr. Hufstedler has represented a broad range of clients in complex business disputes in various state and federal courts, and he has argued numerous matters before California appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. Two of his cases, Lewis v. Anderson , 615 F.2d 778 (1979) and Gaines v. Haughton , 645 F.2d 76...
Steven J. Katzman’s unique and accomplished background includes over three decades of experience in both government service and private practice. A former United States Trustee for five federal judicial districts and federal prosecutor, Steven offers unparalleled trial, bankruptcy and complex litigation experience, specializing in complex insolvency, federal and commercial litigation. During 2003-2008, Steven was appointed as the U.S. Trustee for the Central and Southern Districts of Ca...
Mr. Kinsella is a nationally known trial lawyer specializing in the areas of entertainment and intellectual property litigation. During his career, he has successfully tried numerous cases in state and federal courts, and in private arbitrations and administrative proceedings, involving a wide array of disputes, from copyright and trademark infringement matters to antitrust and securities litigation. Mr. Kinsella has represented large domestic and international corporations, major motion pict...
Michael Kump is a problem solver who fights tenaciously to protect his clients’ valuable intellectual property and contractual rights. Representing plaintiffs and defendants in a broad and sophisticated litigation practice for over thirty-five years, Mr. Kump has extensive experience and success inside and outside the courtroom in all aspects of intellectual property, entertainment, contract, trade secrets, and antitrust litigation. He represents a wide array of corporate and individual...
Gary Lincenberg is a name partner at one of the most prestigious litigation firms in the country and the National Chairman of the ABA White Collar Crime Committee. Mr. Lincenberg's success in the past five years in white collar cases has been remarkable. His two recent trials were against the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where Mr. Lincenberg defended the former CFO of a semiconductor manufacturer against a securities fraud indictment alleging revenue recogniti...
Frank Merideth has wide-ranging litigation experience in state, federal, bankruptcy and tax courts, and administrative proceedings. He also has considerable experience in arbitrations and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. Frank has tried over 75 cases (jury and non-jury) in both state and federal courts as well as before specialized tribunals. His primary focus is in trying complex multi-party litigation, including class actions, actions related to mergers and acquisitions, false...
Ron Nessim has been lead trial counsel in numerous civil and criminal trials and arbitrations. He has argued numerous appeals in both federal and state courts, including in the United States Supreme Court, and has been at the center of numerous precedent-setting, high-profile entertainment, commercial and white-collar criminal law cases. His clients value his attention to detail, ability to think strategically, tenacity and his trial skills. Prior to joining Bird Marella, he served as an Assi...
Mr. Pachulski is widely regarded as one of the preeminent corporate restructuring attorneys in America. He was recently named an “Attorney of the Year” by American Lawyer Media’s Recorder, and has been lead counsel on several deals that have been recognized as “Deal of the Year” by The M&A Advisor, Turnaround & Workouts and Global M&A Network. Over the past few years, he was lead counsel in the corporate restructurings of American Suzuki Motor Corpora...
Bob Platt has been one of Los Angeles’ most successful general commercial litigators for more than 30 years. Bob’s nationwide practice includes all types of complex business litigation, including defending class action lawsuits, false advertising lawsuits, consumer class actions, housing discrimination lawsuits, employment litigation, wage and hour class actions, trade secret litigation, real estate litigation, securities litigation, entertainment litigation, and sports law. He re...
Ekwan E. Rhow is a name principal at Bird Marella. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. Chambers & Partners has recognized Ekwan as a “trial expert” who is often called upon to “undertake high-profile work” and “bet-the-farm litigation,” and has described him as “articulate, brilliant in court and very hard-working.” Benchmark Litigation has named Ekwan as one of t...
Our Methodology
Recognition by Best Lawyers is based entirely on peer review. Our methodology is designed to capture, as accurately as possible, the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their colleagues within the same geographical area and legal practice area.
The Process
Best Lawyers employs a sophisticated, conscientious, rational, and transparent survey process designed to elicit meaningful and substantive evaluations of the quality of legal services. Our belief has always been that the quality of a peer review survey is directly related to the quality of the voters.