Dennis Ellis is a partner in Morrison Foerster’s Complex Litigation + Advisement practice group. He is a trial lawyer whose practice focuses on consumer class actions, unfair competition, business torts, product liability defense, environmental law, and breach of contract actions.

Dennis has represented clients across a range of industries, including cosmetics and personal care products companies, major retail chains and companies in the petroleum, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing sectors.

He has also written on product liability and judgment enforcement. He is the author of the practitioner’s treatise Enforcement of Judgments: A Practitioner’s Guide to Recovery and a Whittier Law Review article addressing attempts to recast product liability claims as fraud claims.

Dennis is a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel and a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America’s Trial Lawyer Honorary Society. He also serves on the Board of Visitors at Howard University School of Law and formerly served as general counsel and a board member of the Zeitgeist Community Learning Center.

Dennis graduated from California State University, Fullerton in 1990, where he was a starting offensive lineman on the Titan football team. Before attending law school, Dennis served as a Jesse Marvin Unruh Assembly Fellow and later as chief legislative advisor to California Assemblywoman Carol Bentley. He graduated cum laude from Howard University School of Law in 1995. While there, Dennis was first runner-up in the Charles H. Houston Moot Court Competition, a member of the National Moot Court Team, and a member of the Howard Law Journal.

Representative Experience

• Has served as lead trial counsel for a major utility company in three separate cases, including one where he obtained a complete defense verdict in a three-month trial involving negligence and defamation claims arising from damage to a natural gas pipeline.
  
• Defended consumer packaged goods companies in class actions nationwide, securing dismissals at the pleading stage and defeating motions for class certification.
  
• Led the team representing New World TMT Limited in litigation against PrediWave Corporation, eight related companies, and its CEO. Obtained terminating sanctions and a judgment exceeding $2.8 billion, believed to be the largest judgment ever obtained by a Chinese company in a U.S. court.
  
• Served as lead trial counsel for a major healthcare company in a three-month trial involving $16 million in claims brought by a preventive medical scanning company concerning allegedly malfunctioning equipment. The jury rejected the plaintiff’s theory and concluded that the plaintiff’s business failure resulted from industry conditions and its own management decisions.
  
• Served as lead counsel for the claimant in a confidential environmental arbitration concerning unpaid response costs associated with an enforcement action by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. A three-judge panel awarded approximately $2 million in response costs, more than $650,000 in prejudgment interest, and more than $2 million in attorneys’ fees.