Julian W. Poon, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is an appellate and general commercial litigator specializing in class-action appellate and general litigation. His first-chair appellate experience includes presenting oral argument to the Ninth, D.C., and Federal Circuits, and to California's state appellate courts (including the Supreme Court), and he has successfully handled a broad range of cases at both the appellate and trial court levels, in state and federal court, including several major wage-and-hour class actions. Prior to joining the firm's Litigation Department, Mr. Poon served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of the United States, and to Judge J. Michael Luttig, formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Mr. Poon's recent 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 over the sale of a multi-state non-standard auto-insurance business; winning a precedent-setting decision on 28 U.S.C. § 1782 (the statute authorizing U.S. discovery in aid of foreign proceedings) from the Fifth Circuit and a string of related appellate victories, including in the Third, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits, on behalf of a major oil company in a potentially multi-billion-dollar environmental dispute; persuading the Ninth Circuit to grant interlocutory review, on the eve of trial, of a class-certification ruling in a major wage-and-hour class action; securing a complete victory from the Federal Circuit in a patent-infringement dispute; briefing and arguing an appeal concerning the existence of a settlement privilege in the D.C. Circuit; briefing and arguing a trademark appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; presenting oral argument to the California Court of Appeal and persuading that court to recognize that a will can have a non-testamentary, in praesenti effect; winning a precedent-setting decision on loss causation from the Tenth Circuit in a major securities class-action appeal; securing a precedent-setting decision from the Arkansas Supreme Court regarding the obligation of corporate officers and directors to disclose their own wrongdoing; defeating an appeal brought in the Ninth Circuit by a major insurer against a well-known reinsurer; helping to secure a precedent-setting decision from the Ninth Circuit concerning the classification of claims adjusters for purposes of overtime-pay requirements; and helping to secure the affirmance of the denial of class certification in a major state-court wage-and-hour class action against a health care provider.
Mr. Poon has also played a substantial role in a wide range of labor, antitrust, trade regulation, intellectual property, energy, First Amendment, media access, and other matters, including defeating a putative nationwide wage-and-hour class action brought against a major electronics distributor, without any discovery having taken place; defeating a putative state-wide wage-and-hour class action brought on behalf of all of a leading retailer's current and former employees in the State of California; and participating in the successful defense of a major energy provider and its public-utility subsidiaries in the largest antitrust class action in California history.
Mr. Poon graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1999, receiving the Fay Diploma for placing first in his class. He served as a Note Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and was awarded the Sears Prize during each of his first and second years of study for placing at the top of his class. Mr. Poon also graduated with distinction and with honors, in Economics and in Public Policy, from Stanford University in 1996, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Mr. Poon is admitted to practice law in the State of California. He is also a member of the of the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, District of Columbia, and Federal Circuits, the U.S. District Courts for the Central, Northern, Eastern, and Southern Districts of California, as well as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. He has published, spoken, or been a commentator on a range of topics, including class actions, punitive damages, securities, antitrust, intellectual property, and settlement privileges, and was featured on the cover of the February 2011 issue of Los Angeles Lawyer magazine. In 2008, Mr. Poon was named one of the "Top 20 Under 40" lawyers in California by the Daily Journal and as one of the "Best Lawyers Under 40" in 2011 by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA). He was also named a "future litigation star" in the 2010, 2011, and 2012 editions of Institutional Investor's Nationwide Benchmark Litigation Guide and a "Southern California Rising Star" in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2012 by Law and Politics and Los Angeles magazines. Mr. Poon serves on the Board of Trustees of Southern California Public Radio, and serves or has served on the firm's Associate Compensation Committee, Diversity and Hiring Committees.
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
Fourth Circuit Holds That Partial Disclosures Must Relate Back to Alleged Misrepresentations to Satisfy Loss Causation Requirement Under Federal Securities Laws, Client Alert, Mar 28, 2011
Class Distinctions, Article, Feb 1, 2011
Aggregation or Stacking of Penalties or Punitive Measures, Article, Sep 1, 2010
U.S. Department of Labor Attempts to Alter Overtime Requirements for Certain Financial Industry Employees Through Novel Use of "Administrator's Interpretation," Rather Than Through Ordinary Rulemaking or An Opinion Letter, Client Alert, Mar 29, 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
Tenth Circuit Clarifies Loss Causation Burden, Article, May 4, 2009
Interlocutory Appellate Review of Class-Certification Rulings under Rule 23(f): Do Articulated Standards Matter?, Article, Mar 31, 2009
Tenth Circuit Rules on Loss Causation, 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
Tenth Circuit Issues Opinion Providing Robust Analysis of the Loss Causation Burden Under Federal Securities Laws, Client Alert, Feb 19, 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
Supreme Court Reaffirms Narrow Scope of Primary Liability Under Section 10(b): Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific Atlanta, Inc.: The Supreme Court Rejects "Scheme" Liability, Insights, Vol. 22, No. 1, Article, Feb 10, 2008
U.S. Supreme Court's Decision Today Limits the Scope of Private Rights of Action Under the Federal Securities Laws, Client Alert, Jan 15, 2008
Client Caution: Settlement Discussions and Documents May Not Be Protected from Future Discovery, Article, May 25, 2006
U.S. Supreme Court Issues Landmark Ruling Abrogating Its Decades-Old Presumption that Antitrust Market Power Arises From the Mere Ownership of IP Rights, Client Alert, Mar 2, 2006