Adam Wolfson is a partner in Quinn Emanuel’s San Francisco and Los Angeles offices whose practice focuses on both plaintiff and defense-side representations in high-stakes complex commercial and intellectual property disputes. Adam has extensive experience in all types of complex litigation, with a particular focus in cases involving antitrust law, products liability, class actions, unfair competition, trade secret misappropriation, and patent and copyright infringement. To date, he has helped our clients obtain more than $14 billion in recoveries, stemming from both trial verdicts and settlements. On the defense side, he has helped our clients avoid liability for multiples of that number.
Adam currently serves on the Board of Visitors for UCLA’s Political Science Department and regularly publishes on issues related to trial practice and the areas of law in which he practices. He has been named both a Rising Star and MVP in class actions by national legal journal Law360, a Future Star by Benchmark Litigation, one of the top 500 plaintiffs’ attorneys in the nation by Lawdragon 500, was named by Legal 500 USA as a Recommended Lawyer in the Antitrust Litigation category, and the Daily Journal - Top Antitrust Lawyers.
- Intuit
- MediaTek
- Samsung
- Cisco
- Daimler
- Qualcomm
- AliveCor
- Viasat
- Obtained $5.3 billion in final judgments—representing 100% of the plaintiffs’ damages—against the federal government due to its failure to make “risk corridor” and “cost sharing reduction” payments to three separate certified classes of Affordable Care Act health insurers.
- Served on the plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in In re Combat Arms Earplug Product Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2885, in which the plaintiffs, service members from all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, sued to recover for damages they suffered from the use of defective earplugs 3M sold to the USAF for over a decade. In that role, Adam tried three bellwether cases to verdict (winning each one) and, through his contributions, helped secure a $6 billion settlement for all affected veterans.
- Represented Solutia Inc. in an action for specific performance of a $2 billion bankruptcy exit financing facility, which the banks had refused to fund based on a market MAC provision; case settled favorably before closing arguments.
- Prevailed at trial and obtained full defense verdict of antitrust claim alleging $150 million in damages between two lithium-ion battery manufacturers.
- Obtained, on behalf of Daimler AG and several of its subsidiaries, complete dismissal of a putative class action alleging that Daimler and the other major German auto manufacturers conspired to reduce innovation in their vehicles and caused purchasers billions of dollars in damages.
- Obtained, on behalf of Trafigura Trading and related entities, complete dismissal of multi-billion dollar antitrust, RICO, tort, and contract claims asserted by a purported litigation trust for conduct allegedly arising in the Venezuelan energy industry.
- Obtained over $430 million in settlements on behalf of a certified nationwide class of direct purchasers of flexible polyurethane foam for damages caused by a price-fixing cartel of the nation’s largest foam manufacturers.
- Prevailed at trial and obtained a $283 million jury verdict on behalf of ViaSat Inc. in a patent infringement and breach of contract dispute against a satellite manufacturer accused of stealing and copying ViaSat’s innovative designs.
- Obtained summary judgment for Haymon Sports and its CEO, Alan Haymon, the most prominent boxing manager in the sport today, in a $300 million antitrust lawsuit brought by Oscar De La Hoya and his Golden Boy promotion companies.
- On behalf of a company called Songkick, sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation for antitrust violations in the artist presale ticketing services market. After completing fact and expert discovery, defeated the defendants’ summary judgment motion in its entirety (which no antitrust plaintiff had previously been able to accomplish against Ticketmaster) and subsequently resolved the case two weeks before trial with a $110 million settlement payment and acquisition of Songkick’s assets for a confidential amount.
- Currently representing a certified class of consumers against Visa, Mastercard, and several major banks for their collusion over creating and maintaining rules aimed at elevating ATM access fees to anticompetitive levels.
- Currently representing a heart health technology company, AliveCor, Inc., in its antitrust lawsuit regarding Apple’s anticompetitive acts to copy and then exclude AliveCor’s groundbreaking heart rhythm analysis software from the Apple Watch
- Currently representing a putative class of consumers against Amazon regarding its anticompetitive platform most-favored nations practices, which served to elevate consumer prices by maintaining Amazon’s commissions at supracompetitive levels.
- Prevailed at trial and obtained rare Walker Process antitrust fraud verdict and trebled attorneys’ fees as damages against 3M Company on behalf of TransWeb, LLC.
- Obtained confidential settlement on behalf of the Winklevoss twins against Facebook Inc. in connection with the dispute that was later made into the movie, The Social Network.
- Obtained summary judgment for IBM in connection with claims brought by T3 Technologies Inc. for alleged antitrust violations related to mainframe technology.
- Obtained full dismissal of all claims against Brazilian banking client in connection with dispute over breach of interest rate swaps.
- Obtained confidential settlements on behalf of investment funds that were defrauded into purchasing debt and bonds for failed beverage company, Le Nature’s Inc.
- Defended and obtained confidential settlement on behalf of American Realty Capital and certain of its subsidiaries and affiliates in connection with allegations that ARC misappropriated one of its competitor’s trade secrets.
- University of Michigan Law School
(J.D., cum laude, 2005)- Michigan Law Review:
- Associate Editor
- Michigan Law Review:
- University of California, Los Angeles
(B.A., Political Science, cum laude, 2001)
- The State Bar of New York
- The State Bar of California
- United States District Courts:
- Southern District of New York
- Eastern District of New York
- Central District of California
- Northern District of California
- Southern District of California
- Northern District of Illinois
- United States Court of Federal Claims
- United States Court of Appeals
- Federal Circuit
- Ninth Circuit
- Ranked by Legal 500 USA, Dispute Resolution: Product Liability, Mass Tort and Class Actions: Toxic Tort – Defense, “Recommended Lawyers”, 2024
- Ranked by Legal 500 USA, Antitrust: Civil Litigation/Class Actions: Defense, Plaintiff “Recommended Lawyers”, 2023-2024
- Ranked by Daily Journal - Top Antitrust Lawyers, 2023
- Ranked by Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers Guide in Commercial & IP Litigation, 2019-2024
- Recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a Future Stars, 2023
- Named a Law360 MVP in Class Action, 2022.
- Named a Recommended Lawyer in the Antitrust Litigation category by Legal 500 USA, 2018, 2022
- Named a Rising Star in the field of class action law by national legal journal Law360, 2019
- Selected as a SuperLawyer Rising Star, 2017-2020
- Selected as a “New York Metro” SuperLawyer Rising Star, 2016
- “The State of Mind Exception: A (Potential) Path to Proving Customer or Profit Loss Due to Anticompetitive Conduct,” Trying Antitrust, Summer 2019
- “Taking Depositions with Trial Attendance in Mind,” Trying Antitrust, Spring 2016
- “Analysis: Trolls take on white hats – keep watching,“ Global Competition Review USA, Feb. 27, 2014
- Note, “Electronic Fingerprints”: Doing Away With the Conception of Computer-Generated Records as Hearsay, 104 Mich. L. Rev. 151 (2005)
- Board of Advisers, UCLA Political Science Department
- Member, Association of Business Trial Lawyers