Robins Kaplan

Employing over 220 attorneys, Robins Kaplan manages US offices in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Silicon Valley, and Naples, Florida in addition to its home base in Minneapolis, qualifying it as one of the larger and more comprehensive plaintiff shops. While the firm does juggle some defense-side work as well, the bulk of its work is on behalf of individuals and institutions taking on corporate entities, particularly in large class actions but also in areas as varied as intellectual property and personal injury.

Anne Lockner, a partner in the firm's business litigation department and Co-Chair of its Retail Industry Group in Minneapolis, has handled cases regarding a number of different industries, including retail, manufacturing, franchisor, financial, construction, food and beverage, technology, and logistics. Chair of the firm's Business Litigation department, Christopher Madel has extensive experience in representing clients in minority-shareholder disputes, billion-dollar claims in connection with major corporate acquisitions, alleged theft of trade secrets, computer hacking, corporate espionage, allegations of attorney malpractice and misconduct, and defenses relating to alleged regulatory violations and white-collar crimes. Madel served as lead counsel for Wayzata Nissan in a dispute stemming from the opening of a Nissan dealership within ten miles of the client, which also sold Nissan cars and had territorial protections under the Minnesota Motor Vehicle Sale Distribution Act. Nissan filed a declaratory judgement action in federal district court, where Madel and his team won a dismissal on jurisdictional grounds. When Nissan appealed to the Eighth Circuit, the team again prevailed and persuaded the panel that it should abstain and let the state courts hear the lawsuit. Martin Lueck has for 25 years successfully tried cases on both the defendant and plaintiff side of the courtroom in the areas of intellectual property, antitrust, commercial, and business litigation. Chris Messerly has devoted his practice to representing families and individuals who have been injured in cases involving medical malpractice, personal injury, products liability, and harm. Chair of the firm's National IP and Technology Litigation Group, managing partner of its New York office, and member of its Executive Board, Ronald Schutz specializes in intellectual property, business, and health care litigation. His representation led to a reversal of a judgement no infringement in a patent infringement case for Rembrandt Vision Technologies involving extended wear soft contact lenses. At the time of the original trial in 2012, the sales of the accused infringement contact lenses was over $5 billion, and the royalty damages sought by Rembrandt were almost $500 million.

In the firm's New York office, Hollis Salzman, who joined the firm from fellow top plaintiff shop Labaton Sucharow, has considerable experience in the area of antitrust litigation that has earned her national recognition. In an ongoing case, she represents as co-lead counsel a nationwide class of persons who purchased or sold at artificial prices physical natural gas over-the-counter or natural gas financial contracts on either the NYMEX or ICE exchanges or on an electric platform in a lawsuit that alleges that defendant Total Gas & Power North America manipulated the monthly index settlement prices of natural gas at four major trading locations in the Southwestern US. The defendant carried out its unlawful manipulation of natural gas prices by intentionally reporting non-economic transactions. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a show-cause order proposing that the defendant and two of its employees pay $225 million in civil penalties and disgorgement.