Los Angeles

Overview

As a West Coast focal point of the firm's practice, the Los Angeles office serves a broad array of clients spanning the region's most vibrant industries, including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, computer and Internet companies, banking, insurance and financial services institutions, international oil and gas companies, FORTUNE 500 industrial and consumer product companies, healthcare providers, and entertainment and media companies.

Our Los Angeles practice is broad-based and well-respected both locally and nationally. Clients across the US regularly turn to our Los Angeles lawyers to handle complex and cutting-edge matters involving civil, criminal, regulatory, and commercial litigation; antitrust and trade regulation; intellectual property and information technology; entertainment; corporate transactions; international investments and ventures; complex real estate transactions; securities regulation; internal investigations and white collar defense; environmental and regulatory law; federal and state taxation; employment; and partnership disputes. Chambers USA 2009 recognized four of the office's practice areas—antitrust, intellectual property, IT (information technology) & IT outsourcing, and litigation. Chambers USA 2009 also named six of our Los Angeles attorneys as "leading lawyers" in antitrust, environment, intellectual property, IT & IT outsourcing, and real estate. Our Los Angeles team draws on the full interdisciplinary resources of its colleagues worldwide to provide coordinated services in over 30 areas of practice.

The Los Angeles office serves as a West Coast gateway to clients who want to tap expanding global markets. Working with other offices of the firm, we offer our clients innovative ways to address the US and EU legal aspects of doing business across the globe, including the vastly expanding markets of Asia. Whether it be a western company doing business in Asia or Asian companies wanting to do business in the United States or the European Union, Arnold & Porter is prepared to help directly and through strategic partnerships with colleagues worldwide. We seek effective legal, public policy, and regulatory solutions to overcome transactional and regulatory challenges and regularly represent clients in litigation involving cross-border issues or commerce.

Our Los Angeles office has an active pro bono practice in the civil, criminal, and transactional arenas. Representative matters include immigration proceedings to First Amendment litigation to tenants' rights, estate disputes, consumer litigation, and environmental justice. The office's pro bono work in the Los Angeles community has been recognized with awards from the ABA (Pro Bono Law Firm of the Year), the California Lawyer/ Los Angeles Daily Journal (Pro Bono "Angel" Award; Innovative Pro Bono Projects), the HIV/AIDS Legal Service Alliance, and the Alameda County Bar Association and its Volunteer Legal Services Corporation.

Representative areas of the practice in our Los Angeles office include:

• Complex Litigation. Our litigation practice is distinguished by the complexity, high stakes and novelty of the matters we handle. Los Angeles litigators appear in federal and state courts throughout California and across the US and frequently lead national teams handling multidistrict or multijurisdictional litigation, class actions, and other complex litigation, as well as cases testing innovative theories of liability or defense. A cross-section of recent matters include representing an international insurer in coordinated proceedings involving hundreds of clergy abuse lawsuits, federal and state securities and shareholder litigation involving national clients and high-profile allegations of misconduct, national MDL proceedings involving product liability and environmental claims, international trade secret litigation, intellectual property litigation and related congressional and agency proceedings concerning the Internet, consumer class actions and related governmental investigations concerning emerging computer and online technologies, EPA and state cost recovery proceedings and related private litigation, and defending a sitting US district judge in disciplinary proceedings and congressional hearings raising allegations of wrongdoing.
• Intellectual Property and Technology Litigation. We have an extensive intellectual property and technology practice-over 100 lawyers firmwide-that provides litigation and strategic counseling services to computer, software, entertainment, Internet, and new media businesses on a broad range of intellectual property, contractual, and competitive issues. We represent technology companies in leading-edge litigation and test cases concerning technology and the scope of intellectual property law, including patent, copyright, trade secret, trademark, right of publicity, and unfair competition litigation. Lawyers in the Los Angeles office lead litigation throughout the US and in other parts of the world, including for both US and foreign parties. We represent clients in trial and appellate courts, US and international arbitrations, and regulatory and congressional proceedings. Recently, our Los Angeles lawyers led a team from offices throughout the firm in successfully resolving major litigation concerning the Internet pending in multiple federal and state courts and before the ICC, and in related US agency proceedings and congressional hearings. We regularly represent companies in litigation concerning novel issues posed by new media, including intellectual property and unfair competition litigation among competitors, state and federal regulatory proceedings, and consumer class actions. Our intellectual property and technology team in Los Angeles has long had a national reputation for its representation of computer and Internet companies.
• Corporate Transactions. Our lawyers handle major transactions across a broad range of industries. We offer a comprehensive range of professional services for private equity and venture funds, and for companies ranging from start-ups to global leaders, including: fund formation; structuring investments, mergers, acquisitions and leveraged buyouts; corporate counseling; restructurings/workouts; IPO and secondary offerings; licensing; outsourcing joint ventures; strategic alliances; licensing distribution; and intellectual property counseling and prosecution. We have in-depth experience in location-based entertainment/theme park licenses, project development, and financing worldwide. Our transactional lawyers in Los Angeles frequently work with our lawyers across the firm to bring to bear the full interdisciplinary resources of our practice worldwide to strategic counseling and transactional projects with an emphasis in advising companies in direct foreign investment both into and out of the US.
• Real Estate. Our Los Angeles real estate practice provides a wide range of real estate legal services to corporate and institutional clients, developers, investors, lenders and others, including the purchase and sale of commercial properties; the acquisition, subdivision and entitlement of land for the development of residential subdivisions; shopping centers and office buildings; real estate loans; long-term financeable ground leases; large commercial, industrial, shopping center and office building space leases; mission critical data center leases; construction and design contracts for major projects, such as owner/architect agreements, construction management contracts, preconstruction services contracts, and construction contracts involving various project delivery systems; workouts; entitlements for significant real estate development projects, including applications for specific plans, vesting tentative maps, and development agreements. Our experience also encompasses the tax-efficient monetization of offshore real estate assets.
• Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, and Medical Devices. Our team has extensive experience representing pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device and other companies in internal investigations and risk assessments, product liability lawsuits, and complex, multi-district mass tort litigation filed in California and across the country. Our clients range from the major pharmaceutical companies to smaller companies in the early stages of developing and marketing biotech and medical device products. Our Los Angeles attorneys played a leading role as national coordinating counsel, trial counsel, and lead settlement counsel for Wyeth in litigation arising from use of the diet drugs Pondimin and Redux. Approximately six million individuals in the US took these products, and their withdrawal from the market led to the filing of class action lawsuits in nearly every state and tens of thousands of individual lawsuits. Attorneys in the Los Angeles office were responsible for supervising all of the diet drug litigation in most of the western states. Furthermore, we negotiated and implemented a novel, nationwide class action settlement that resolved thousands of claims and significantly limited the company's exposure to any future liability. We subsequently developed and implemented an aggressive trial strategy that resulted in numerous defense verdicts and helped force nearly all of the remaining cases to settle. As part of an ongoing commitment to excellence and innovation, we are also leading the way in understanding the potential legal and regulatory implications of the quickly emerging field of nanotechnology, as it relates to the pharmaceuticals, biotech, and medical devices arenas.
• Environmental Disputes and Litigation. We emphasize devising innovative, cost-effective solutions that minimize litigation and dispute-related costs. Our attorneys handle class actions, multidistrict litigations, medical monitoring claim, and agency proceedings involving exposure to toxic chemicals, pipeline ruptures, air, water and soil contamination, and project development. Our experience extends across the field of environmental law, including CERCLA, RCRA, Proposition 65, CEQA, public nuisance, product liability, and B&P Code § 17200. Current matters include playing a leadership role in defending multidefendant, multijurisdictional litigation concerning alleged hazards arising from lead pigment and soil and groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether ("MTBE"), federal Superfund sites across the United States, remediation of perchlorate contamination, and counseling involving Proposition 65 requirements.
• Antitrust Litigation and Counseling. Our Los Angeles lawyers play an integral role in the firm's worldwide antitrust practice, with a particular focus on litigation in federal and state trial and appellate courts. Recent matters handled by Los Angeles antitrust litigators include defending multijurisdictional actions involving parallel government and private class action damages cases arising from alleged price-fixing and other cartel conduct across numerous industries, including pharmaceutical, information technology, petroleum and natural gas, chemical, paper, entertainment, and sports. Besides traditional antitrust claims and theories, our lawyers handle cutting-edge litigation involving novel competition and consumer protection issues arising from emerging communication and Internet technologies.