Quinn Emanuel has an extensive nationwide appellate practice that focuses on briefing and arguing significant cases before the United States Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeals (particularly the Second, Ninth and Federal Circuits), as well as intermediate courts of appeal and high courts of California, New York and other states. Our appellate experience spans all areas of our practice, from copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret law to antitrust, arbitration, business torts, commercial contracts, financial products, insurance and reinsurance, media, securities, bankruptcy, products liability and white-collar criminal defense.
Our appellate practice is headed by Kathleen M. Sullivan, a longtime law professor at Harvard and Stanford Law Schools who served as Dean at Stanford from 1999 to 2004. One of the nation’s most renowned appellate litigators and recently described by The National Law Journal as a “high court superstar” and by the New York Times as a “formidable advocate,” she has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of clients such as Shell Oil Company, Wyeth, Inc., and California wineries for whom she won a landmark 2005 victory establishing that states may not bar wineries from shipping to out-of-state consumers. The National Law Journal has twice named her one of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,” The American Lawyer Litigation Daily named her Litigator of the Week, California Lawyer magazine has named her Appellate Lawyer of the Year, Law360 named her Appellate MVP and she received the 2011 Gould Award for Outstanding Appellate Advocacy. Her appellate win-loss record since January 2010 is a stunning 16-3.
Ms. Sullivan’s immensely talented appellate team, whose success has been acknowledged by repeated recognition in The National Law Journal’s 2008, 2010 and 2011 “Appellate Hot Lists,” spans our U.S. offices and includes Susan R. Estrich, the first woman President of the Harvard Law Review and a former law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; Andy Schapiro, a former Mayer Brown partner and law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun; Daniel H. Bromberg, a former Jones Day partner with experience at every level of the appellate courts and special expertise in California appeals; Sandy Weisburst, first in his class at U. of Chicago Law School and a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Christine Chung, former chief of appeals in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and prosecutor at the International Criminal Court; Margret Caruso, an experienced appellate advocate who has successfully litigated several groundbreaking copyright cases; and Adam Abensohn, former two-time clerk to now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Quinn Emanuel’s appellate practice is also uniquely intertwined with its trial practice; the firm’s leading trial lawyers such as Faith Gay, Rick Werder, Michael Carlinsky, Peter Armenio, Robert Raskopf, and Christopher Tayback regularly argue and win significant appeals for such clients as IBM, Coca-Cola, the NFL, and AIG. And patent litigator Charles Verhoeven’s win-loss record in the Federal Circuit is now a remarkable 12-0. In total, 37 of the firm’s associates clerked on federal appellate courts. Such associates as William Adams, Kevin Smith, Isaac Nesser, Maaren Choksi, David Mader, Christian Sjulsen, Ellyde Roko, Todd Anten, David Schwartz, Brett Arnold and Timothy Butler provide invaluable help in the steady flow of the firm’s appellate briefing.
See Our Recent Representations