Melvin Goldman has over 40 years of experience in high stakes litigation. Mr. Goldman specializes in the defense of securities and antitrust litigation and other complex commercial litigation and has defended corporations and their officers and directors before juries in securities, antitrust, and fraud actions, as well as other complex commercial lawsuits.
Antitrust
Mr. Goldman has been actively involved in antitrust defense since he began practice in 1962, starting with the defense of Westinghouse in the Electrical Conspiracy Cases, landmark litigation in the antitrust field.
He has defended companies charged with antitrust violations in connection with vertical distribution and marketing activities, including resale price maintenance, territorial and product allocations, and exclusive dealing arrangements. He has also brought and defended claims directed at mergers of competitors and of suppliers and distributors in a broad range of industries and products, including milk, liquor, beer, pharmaceuticals, respirators, ticket sales, books, records, newspapers, television, soft drinks, petroleum, auto windows, chemicals, and tax services. He has successfully tried several antitrust cases to jury verdicts.
He defended Barnes & Noble in 2001 in class actions by the independent retail book sellers in the United States alleging violations of federal and state antitrust laws. The trial court granted the company's motion for summary judgment essentially eliminating the plaintiffs' multi-billion dollar damage claims.
Mr. Goldman also defended The Coca-Cola Company in a lawsuit challenging the exclusive territories of Coca-Cola bottlers, and the Company's efforts to deter transshipments of Coca-Cola overseas. Following summary judgment upholding Coca-Cola's exclusive territories, the lawsuit settled.
In 2005, Mr. Goldman represented a major financial institution, a defendant in a treble damage action by a major credit card company claiming market exclusions by its competitors and their bank members; the claims against our client were settled before trial.
Earlier, in 1999, he defended Bergen Brunswig, a drug wholesaler, in a jury trial in federal court in Chicago. The claims of a class of all retail pharmacists in the United States against Bergen and the other defendants were dismissed by the Trial Court at the close of plaintiffs' case, and the dismissal was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. Prior to trial, other drug company defendants had settled these claims by paying several billion dollars to the plaintiffs.
Securities Litigation
Mr. Goldman's experience with securities litigation reaches back nearly 40 years since he represented Memorex Corporation in the first large securities class action filed against a Silicon Valley high-tech company. Since then he has been involved in over 100 securities cases, both in California and elsewhere in the United States. Mr. Goldman has represented companies and their directors and officers in defense of class and derivative litigation, SEC actions, and other governmental investigations involving a variety of accounting and financial disclosure issues, including revenue recognition, accruals, reserves, audits, restatements, information systems, internal controls, and stock options.
He has also been retained by Boards of Directors, Audit Committees, and Special Committees of Boards of Directors to assist in their conduct of investigations and reviews of various matters, including claims or issues raised in derivative or class action lawsuits or in regulatory proceedings, including claims of stock options backdating. In the past four years, he has been retained by Special Board Committees including those of Cisco Systems, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard. He has been retained by a number of financial institutions, including Crocker Bank and Wells Fargo Bank in the 1980s-1990s.
Currently, he is representing the former officers and directors of Downey Financial Corporation, a bank taken over by the FDIC in 2009. A federal securities class action filed in Los Angeles against these officers and directors was dismissed with prejudice by the Court in 2009 following the defendants' successful motions to dismiss.
Mr. Goldman is active in local, state, and national legal organizations. Mr. Goldman is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. Mr. Goldman is a member of the American Law Institute, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the Antitrust Section and Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. He served as a lawyer representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference and was appointed by the Chief Judge of the Northern District of California as a member of the Court's Advisory Committee under the Civil Justice Reform Act. During 1995, Mr. Goldman served as President of the Bar Association of San Francisco.
Mr. Goldman held several teaching positions throughout his career. He taught trial technique to government lawyers and antitrust attorneys, as well as private practitioners, as a faculty member of a program sponsored by the Columbia University School of Law. At Stanford University School of Law, he taught a course regarding securities litigation. He has also lectured at the Directors' College presented by Stanford Law School in conjunction with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He served on the Board of Visitors of both Stanford Law School and Northwestern Law School.
Mr. Goldman has served as Chair of the firm's Global Litigation Department and he also is past chair of the firm's Partner Compensation Committee. He has served on Morrison & Foerster's Board of Directors and in 2005 was the recipient of the firm's first Raven award, named for the firm's revered partner, Robert D. Raven.
Mr. Goldman has been listed for 25 years in The Best Lawyers in America, where he is listed as a leader in the fields of Bet-the-Company Litigation, Business Litigation, and Commercial. He has been listed by Chambers USA as a leading lawyer in the fields of Antitrust in 2007, Commercial Litigation in 2007-09, and Securities Litigation in 2007-09. In 2009, Benchmark: The Definitive Guide to America's Leading Litigation Firms & Attorneys listed Mr. Goldman as a leading litigator and Practical Law Company listed him as leading lawyer in San Francisco and Silicon Valley in the field of Dispute Resolution. Mr. Goldman was listed in Who's Who Legal: California 2009 as one of California's leading practitioners in the field of commercial litigation. In 2008, he was listed by San Francisco Magazine as one of the top 100 lawyers in Northern California.
Mr. Goldman is a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma Honorary Society at DePaul University. At Northwestern University School of Law, he served as Managing Editor of the Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Before attending law school, Mr. Goldman was an auditor for a public accounting firm in Chicago. Before entering practice, he was a Teaching Associate at the Northwestern and Stanford Schools of Law.