Calvo Fisher & Jacob Litigation Practice

Calvo Fisher & Jacob has a broad-based litigation and transactional practice with a special emphasis on complex litigation, including class actions, multi-district litigation and cross-border disputes. The firm’s trial and litigation team has extensive experience in federal and state courts across the United States, as well as in courts and tribunals internationally. The  partners in our San Francisco office are recognized as some of the most formidable litigators in California, with an impressive winning record in complex commercial disputes.

Firm litigators have broad experience and expertise in a wide range of litigation matters for both defendants and plaintiffs, including contract disputes, antitrust and competition law, banking and financial services, professional liability, consumer class actions, employment law, construction disputes, tax controversies, and fiduciary matters.

With strong roots in Guam, Saipan and across the Pacific, Calvo Fisher & Jacob is a destination firm for international companies seeking top level litigation capability in the region. Calvo Fisher & Jacob lawyers also have extensive experience handling matters for Japanese companies in the United States.

Our lawyers have had significant success representing plaintiffs, in cases ranging from high-stakes contract and employment controversies to consumer class actions. Firm lawyers have, for example, won two consumer class action trials on behalf of plaintiffs, as well as obtaining favorable settlements in numerous other cases.

Calvo Fisher & Jacob litigators, including the former director of litigation at one of the nation’s largest banks, have deep experience in financial services litigation. Firm lawyers also have significant expertise in professional liability matters and have brought a number of successful legal and accounting malpractice claims. Our partners have played key roles in some of the most important trust and estate cases in California and across the Pacific Rim over the past 25 years.

Firm lawyers also have extensive experience in tax controversy matters, handling federal and state taxpayer examinations, appeals, civil and criminal tax litigation, and other contested tax matters in state and federal courts.

The lawyers on our litigation team joined Calvo Fisher & Jacob because they saw the opportunity to offer clients a more cost-effective model for complex litigation. Our lawyers, who worked for many years at larger law firms, have a long, winning record in litigating major disputes for leading regional, national, and international companies and are now able to offer these same companies their services from an efficient small firm platform.

With years of experience in litigation, arbitration and mediation in venues from California to New York to Tokyo, we work closely with clients to develop and carry out a winning litigation strategy. Utilizing the experience and expertise of some of the region’s top business lawyers as part of the litigation team, the firm offers an integrated approach to solving business problems that have turned into litigation.

Calvo Fisher & Jacob Representative Litigation Matters

• The firm represents the NBC television station in Guam, KUAM, in a First Amendment case against the Guam Police Department that was brought to squash a subpoena and recover a document taken from the station in a police raid in April of 2010. Numerous national broadcast trade organizations have voiced their support for KUAM’s legal efforts in the case.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob represented the United Micronesia Development Association (UMDA) in high-profile litigation against several former UMDA board members and financial advisers that resulted in the recovery of approximately $12 million in settlements from the defendants, including defendants who were convicted of tax fraud in federal court in NY in a related matter. During the course of the representation, a cross-office team composed of lawyers from the firm’s offices in San Francisco, Guam and Saipan conducted an investigation on behalf of a special litigation committee of the Board of Directors, brought a civil suit in Saipan to protect the proceeds from the sale of a resort property and seek damages for illegal payments made to former UMDA officers, defended UMDA board members against counterclaims arising from the civil suit, and protected the company’s interests in the course of the federal criminal investigation of the individual defendants.
• The firm represents a number of prominent Saipan families in a $25 million lawsuit against their former law firm that alleges that the firm had a conflict of interest in the sale of a Saipan beachfront hotel and was instrumental in carrying out a scheme to deceive the local families and strip away their shares in the hotel for the benefit of the firm's other clients.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob represents a class of consumers against Sony Computer Entertainment America (“Sony”) in a case filed in May of 2010. The lawsuit arises out of Sony’s decision to eliminate a valuable, advertised function on its Playstation 3 video game console. The suit seeks damages under California’s Business and Professions Code Section 17200 and California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act. The firm is co-lead counsel in the case.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob represents a class of consumers throughout California who purchased Advanced Medical Optics ’s Complete Moisture Plus contact lens solution, alleging violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Act and California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act. The action has been certified and is currently scheduled for trial in June 2011 in Orange County Superior Court. The firm is co-lead counsel.
• The firm was counsel to the probate estate of the late Larry L. Hillblom, founder of DHL, in the largest probate case in the history of the Pacific region, which included the administration, liquidation, and distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars in worldwide assets.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob led the successful representation of the Japan bankruptcy trustee of EIE International, a failed multi-billion dollar international real estate developer, against Shinsei Bank in complex civil litigation with proceedings in Saipan, Guam, California, and Tokyo. The effort culminated in a $200 million settlement for EIEI. Calvo Fisher & Jacob was the first — and to date, remains the only — U.S. law firm ever to be retained for such a representation in Japan.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob, on behalf of a whistleblower client, sued Citibank under California’s false claims act for its practice of sweeping funds from dormant credit card accounts into Citibank’s own general ledger. The complaint asserted that the money “swept” and kept by Citibank should go back to its customers, or else to the state of California as unclaimed property. After the California attorney general intervened against Citibank, Citibank settled by agreeing to pay refunds and damages totaling $18 million.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob led the team on behalf of Bank of America that defeated multiple challenges to the settlement of a nationwide class action suit alleging that the Bank had wrongfully disclosed personal information of tens of millions of checking account, credit card and mortgage customers. In rejecting the arguments by objectors that the settlement was unfair and inadequate, the California Court of Appeal upheld the settlement, and affirmed Bank of America’s position in all respects.
• Calvo Fisher & Jacob handled the high-profile representation of an Olympic gold-medal winner who brought a gender discrimination claim against the University of California, Berkeley athletic department. The firm’s client was ultimately rehired and the University paid over $1 million in damages and attorney fees.