Legal News

Heller chairman joins Dechert

By Richard Binder

Heller Ehrman chairman Matthew L. Larrabee has joined the San Francisco office of Dechert.

A Dechert spokeswoman, Beth Huffman, said Larrabee declined to comment.

On Sept. 26, Heller's partners voted to dissolve the firm, which had about 550 attorneys. Prior to the dissolution, dozens of partners had left the firm and merger discussions with Chicago's Mayer Brown had failed.

At the time of the dissolution, Larrabee had assured employees that they would get paid under California's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act. Since then, some former staffers at Heller, which laid off its staff on Oct. 17, have filed a class action lawsuit seeking those wages.

Larrabee has represented companies in the financial services, software, pharmaceutical and health care industries. He has handled consumer class actions, antitrust cases, false claim act disputes and other commercial litigation.

In other Heller news, Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell has hired four former Heller attorneys in its Los Angeles office. Jon L. Rewinski, a former Heller partner in Los Angeles, has joined Locke Lord as a partner specializing in complex commercial litigation. He handles class action litigation, securities litigation, dissolutions, derivative actions, intellectual property, unfair competition and employment matters.

Joining him from Heller's Los Angeles office are corporate attorneys Neal H. Brockmeyer and Christopher J. Husa, and Stephen A. Tuggy, an attorney who handles product liability and mass tort defense.

Locke Lord, which now has 39 attorneys in Los Angeles, recently moved into bigger space in its downtown office.

-- Amanda Bronstad

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on October 31, 2008 (boomark / email).