Pierce O'Donnell
Jack Cairl
Mark Grady
Robert M. Partain
Pierce O'Donnell is one of the leading trial lawyers in the country. A partner in O'Donnell & Associates PC, Mr. O'Donnell has handled numerous complex cases in a variety of fields, including antitrust, entertainment, environmental, intellectual property, energy, securities, products liability, toxic tort, real estate, constitutional law, and finance. A graduate of Georgetown and Yale, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White and Ninth Circuit Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler.
In recognition of winning numerous precedent-setting cases. Mr. O'Donnell was named one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America" by the National Law Journal. Recently, he served as lead trial counsel of a team of lawyers who obtained a $1.9 billion settlement from Sempra Energy. Mr. O'Donnell also served as co-lead counsel in securing a $1.7 billion settlement from El Paso National Gas Co. in the related California Energy Crisis litigation. The Sempra/El Paso settlements are the largest antitrust and consumer class action settlements in California and U.S. history.
Mr. O'Donnell was lead counsel for Firestone in the landmark "fear of cancer" case in Potter v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 6 Cal. 4th 965 (1993). In the mid-1990s, he served as lead trial counsel for Pfizer Inc., successfully defending 375 anxiety/emotional distress cases involving allegedly defective Shiley heart valves. A decade later, his defense verdict for Pfizer in three Rezulin cases in 2004 led to the settlement of 4,500 claims.
In 1995, Mr. O'Donnell won the landmark case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. v. American Honda Motor Co., Inc., 900 F. Supp. 1287 (C.D. Cal. 1995), which recognized federal copyright protection of the fictional movie character James Bond. Three years later, he successfully enjoined Sony Corporation from launching its own competing James Bond movie franchise. (Danjaq, LLC v. Sony Corp., 49 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1341, aff'd, 165 F.3d 915 (9th Cir. 1998)). Following his preliminary injunction and appellate victory in GoTo.com v. Walt Disney Co., 202 F.3d 1199 (9th Cir. 2000), Mr. O'Donnell obtained a $21.5 million trademark infringement settlement for his client GoTo.com.
Mr. O'Donnell was engaged by the South Coast Air Quality Management District to prosecute a civil penalty action against BP Arco for ten years of pollution violations at its Torrance refinery. The resulting $106 million settlement-including $30 million for Breathmobiles for underprivileged, asthmatic children-was a record for air pollution enforcement actions in the nation.
In the 1990s, Mr. O'Donnell successfully defended Lockheed Martin Corporation against 3,200 toxic tort claims in state and federal court. In a series of environmental cost recovery cases under CERCLA, he has won judgments or settlements for his clients of over $350 million, including $230 million for Lockheed Martin against the United States.
Mr. O'Donnell's litigation clients include Conoco Phillips, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Pfizer Inc., Reebok, Bridgestone/Firestone, General Electric Capital, National Broadcasting Company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc./United Artists Corporation, DreamWorks SKG, Texaco, W.R. Grace, McCarthy Construction, Miramax Films, New Line Cinema, Republic of France, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena, Anaheim, and Newport Beach. He has also successfully represented many celebrities, including Vidal Sassoon against Proctor & Gamble, Ron Isley in an appeal preserving his $6.5 million copyright infringement verdict against Michael Bolton (212 F.3d 477 (2000)) and Faye Dunaway in her lawsuit against Andrew Lloyd Webber over her wrongful termination from the Los Angeles production of "Sunset Boulevard."
A noted author of over 200 articles and five books, O'Donnell co-authored Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business (Doubleday, 1992), a best selling account of his successful representation of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Art Buchwald against Paramount Pictures in the famous "Coming to America" case. In the wake of his triumph, Forbes Magazine hailed Mr. O'Donnell as "the new Perry Mason in Hollywood." He also co-authored the screenplay for the feature film Home Team (starring Steve Guttenberg). Dawn's Early Light (Rosebud 2001) was his first collection of poems. His most recent book is In Time of War: Hitler's Terrorist Attack on America (New Press 2005). Funny You Asked About That is slated for publication in 2006.
Mr. O'Donnell is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and American Board of Trial Advocates, an Elected Member of the American Law Institute and P.E.N., and Past President of the Economic Round Table of Los Angeles. He frequently lectures at Harvard, UCLA, USC, Loyola, and Pepperdine. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Independent Film and Television Producers Program and as a consultant to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on federal criminal law reform. He lives in Montecito, California with his wife Dawn and five children.
Mr. O'Donnell can be reached by phone at (213) 347-0290 and by e-mail.
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Jack G. Cairl has over twenty-five years of experience in business litigation and trials, securities arbitrations, banking litigation, criminal defense, transactional real estate practice, and death penalty habeas corpus and appeals. He was born on June 10, 1955, in Lansing, Michigan. He received a BA in Political Science from Yale University in 1977, receiving Cum Laude and Distinction in the Major honors. He received a Juris Doctor degree from UCLA School of Law in 1982, where he was awarded the Order of the Coif. Mr. Cairl served as a Judicial Extern to the Hon. William Norris, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1981, and served as the Judicial Law Clerk for the Hon. David W. Williams, Central District of California in 1982-1983. Mr. Cairl began practicing at the Manatt Phelps law firm doing entertainment, insurance and banking litigation work through 1986, when he joined the law firm of Kinsella, Boesch, Fujikawa & Towle, where he was a partner from 1988-1999, and managing partner from 1994-1997. Thereafter, Mr. Cairl was appointed the Supervising Attorney of the Central District of California, Federal Public Defender’s Office, Capital Habeas Unit from 1999-2000. Afterward, he worked for his own firm, the Law Offices of Jack G. Cairl from 2001-2006, where he developed a commercial real estate transactional practice and continued his litigation work. Mr. Cairl became Of-Counsel for O’Donnell & Associations PC in 2006, where he continues his transactional and litigation practice.
Jack Cairl can be reached by phone at (213) 347-0290 and by e-mail.
Professor Mark F. Grady specializes in law and economics and teaches Torts, Antitrust, and Intellectual Property at UCLA School of Law. He received his A.B. degree in Economics (1970) and his J.D. (1973), both from UCLA. He also held postdoctoral fellowships in law and economics at the University of Chicago Law School (1977) and the Yale Law School (1982).
After working for the Federal Trade Commission and the United States Senate, Grady began his academic career at the University of Iowa School of Law. In 1985, Northwestern University appointed him Professor of Law, and he moved to Chicago, Illinois. In the spring of 1990, Grady became the first John M. Olin visiting Professor of Law and Economics at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina. In 1992 he returned to UCLA to become Professor of Law there. Five years later, he took leave from UCLA to move to Arlington, Virginia, to become the third dean of the George Mason University School of Law, University Professor of Law, Chairman of the Law and Economics Center, and Principal Investigator of the law school’s federally funded Critical Infrastructure Protection Project, which he founded. Under Grady’s leadership, George Mason moved from an overall ranking of 115th in the nation to 38th to become the youngest law school in the first tier and the fastest rising law school in the history of U.S. law school rankings. Also, during Grady’s tenure as dean, the George Mason law school moved from 167th (out of 174 American law schools) to 35th in terms of the funds it was able to invest in each of its students. Grady returned to UCLA in 2004 to become Professor of Law and Director of the law school’s new Center for Law and Economics.
Grady is a founding trustee of the American Law and Economics Association and the author of numerous books and articles on torts, intellectual property, antitrust, law and economics, and law and biology. He has served as a consultant to President Ronald Reagan, presented policy papers at President William J. Clinton’s White House, lectured to United States federal judges, given seminars to Congressional staff members, spoken to House leaders from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, and testified to Congressional committees.
Mark Grady can be reached by phone at (213) 347-0290 and by e-mail.
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Mr. Partain represents consumers and plaintiffs in a wide variety of cases, including products liability, business torts, and antitrust. He is presently litigating cases involving defective drugs, illegal airline surcharges, and the Army Corps of Engineer’s failures in the New Orleans’ area which led to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Mr. Partain received his undergraduate degree from California State University Sacramento, (B.S., cum laude, 1999). He received his law degree from University of California, Hastings College of Law, San Francisco (J.D., cum laude, 2002). While at Hastings, Mr. Partain was an executive articles editor at the Hastings Law Journal.
Mr. Partain was admitted to the California Bar in 2002. He is a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, the Consumer Attorneys of California, and The American Association for Justice (formerly ATLA).
Mr. Partain has published a number of articles on a variety of topics, including federal class actions and federal preemption of state law claims. Some of his published pieces are:
Mr. Partain has a number of published decisions, including:
Robert Partain can be reached by phone at (213) 347-0290 and by e-mail.