We represent both plaintiffs and defendants in civil matters, and aggressively advance our clients' interests whether prosecuting or defending a claim. Our business and commercial litigation practice is diverse, sophisticated, and often entails high-profile clients and cases in which the opposition is represented by large national law firms. We provide goal-oriented, cost-effective legal services by working more efficiently, preparing for trial early, and carefully managing the pretrial process.

Our business and commercial litigation caseload typically involves contractual disputes and business torts such as fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in complex business settings. In addition, our lawyers have handled entertainment, employment, antitrust, securities, real estate, intellectual property, construction, RICO and unfair competition cases. Our clients range from well-known Fortune 500 companies to small and medium-sized firms to individuals and sole proprietorships.

A representative sample of our business and commercial litigation experience includes:

		We are defending the trustee of a trust in a lawsuit concerning a dispute over the enforceability of a contract to purchase three contiguous beach-front properties in Santa Monica. The first phase of the lawsuit was recently tried to the Court for six weeks and the decision is pending.
		We represent an internet advertising company in a breach of contract action brought against an on-line dating company. We recently obtained summary adjudication of liability, and the case is set to proceed to trial solely on the question of damages.
		We are defending one of the officers of AOL Time Warner in a class action litigation alleging claims of securities fraud.
		We successfully defended a publicly traded wholesale mortgage lender in a lawsuit brought by a competitor alleging theft of trade secrets, interference with contract, fraud and unfair competition. After defeating the plaintiff's attempt to obtain a preliminary injunction, we were able to negotiate a favorable settlement for the client.
		In a case brought recently by the SEC against one of our clients, the SEC elected to dismiss the case after the first day of trial. Our client walked away from the case without having to pay any money or agree to any form of relief against it whatsoever.
		In three recent unrelated cases, we successfully moved to quash a complaint filed against individuals and corporate defendants from outside the State of California. In each of the three cases - two in state court, one in federal court - the judge ultimately concluded that the court lacked personal jurisdiction over our clients and dismissed the case.
		We successfully defended Philip Morris USA in a breach of contract and defamation case. The case settled shortly before trial after all tort claims were dismissed from the case.
		We obtained an injunction against a national payroll service provider on behalf of a group of regional payroll processing companies preventing the provider from canceling its licenses with the smaller competitors who rely on its software.

We have substantial trial experience and approach each case as a potential trial. This allows our attorneys to focus on the core issues of the case from inception and, in turn, efficiently litigate these issues. Our trial expertise reaps substantial benefits for our clients during trial, and our "trial-ready" philosophy helps us to obtain better settlements prior to trial.