Blaine H. Evanson is a litigation associate in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He practices in the firm's Appellate and Constitutional Law and Class Actions practice groups, focusing on complex commercial litigation at both the trial and appellate levels.
Mr. Evanson has represented clients in a wide variety of appellate matters in both federal and state courts, including the areas of class certification, punitive damages, employment law, product liability, intellectual property, securities law, and constitutional law. Recent representative appellate matters include persuading the Ninth Circuit to reverse a grant of summary judgment and vacate an award of attorneys' fees in a multi-million-dollar breach-of-contract dispute, obtaining a reversal from the Federal Circuit in a patent case involving standing under California's Unfair Competition Law, securing interlocutory review from the Ninth Circuit of a major wage-and-hour class action on the eve of trial, obtaining a remand from the Fourth Circuit on behalf of a newspaper reporter seeking access to sealed legal proceedings, and defeating an appeal brought in the Ninth Circuit by a major insurer against a well-known reinsurer.
Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Evanson served as a law clerk for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 2006, where he was a James Kent Scholar, a Senior Editor on the Columbia Law Review, and the recipient of the best brief award in Columbia's Harlan Fiske Stone Moot Court. Mr. Evanson received his Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems, with University Honors, from Brigham Young University in 2003.
Mr. Evanson has taught courses on constitutional law and appellate advocacy at the University of Southern California and Loyola Law Schools, and has lectured and written on a variety of subjects, including punitive damages, class actions, and constitutional law. He has been named a "Rising Star" in the area of appellate litigation every year since 2010 by the Southern California "Superlawyers" edition of Los Angeles magazine.
Mr. Evanson is a member of the California bar, admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, Federal, and D.C. Circuits, and the U.S. District Courts for the Central and Northern Districts of California.
Recent Publications
California Supreme Court Hands Down Long-Anticipated Wage-and-Hour Class Action Decision in Brinker v. Superior Court, Client Alert, Apr 13, 2012
The Essential Role of New Lawyers in Pro Bono Work, Article, Oct 18, 2011
Challenging the Presumption of Reliance on Class Certification after Halliburton and Wal-Mart, Article, Aug 1, 2011
Seventh Circuit Issues Important Decision on Key Class-Certification Issues, Client Alert, Apr 5, 2011
Class Distinctions, Article, Feb 1, 2011
Other Due Process Challenges To The Class Device, Article, Sep 1, 2010
Aggregation or Stacking of Penalties or Punitive Measures, Article, Sep 1, 2010
Ninth Circuit Issues A Trilogy Of Decisions That May Significantly Enhance Defendants' Ability To Contest Class Certification And Liability, Client Alert, Jul 14, 2009
Interlocutory Appellate Review of Class-Certification Rulings under Rule 23(f): Do Articulated Standards Matter?, Article, Mar 31, 2009
Must Employers Include Meal-Period Premium Payments in the "Regular Rate" Used to Compute the Overtime Owed to Their Employees?, Client Alert, Feb 26, 2009
U.S. Supreme Court's Decision Limits the Amount of Punitive Damages Available under Federal Common Law and Comments on Due Process Limitations on Punitive Damages in Class Actions, Client Alert, Jun 26, 2008