Kristin Hucek represents clients in all facets of commercial litigation. Prior to joining Keker, Van Nest & Peters, Ms. Hucek was a trial attorney for the special litigation section of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and an attorney advisor to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Pardon Attorney. In these roles she directed investigations into alleged constitutional rights violations at detention centers, and personally generated clemency recommendations for more than 100 of the 1,700 individuals whose applications were granted by President Obama.
Ms. Hucek also formerly was an associate at a Washington, D.C. based law firm where she represented a corporate client in a complex antitrust class action, defended a financial institution against a consumer class action, and represented a state government in environmental litigation. She also represented plaintiffs in a civil rights class action against the U.S. Postal Service.
Ms. Hucek graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and cum laude from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Economics and French. During law school she served as a research assistant to professor William B. Rubenstein. As an intern at The Legal Resource Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, she provided guidance to black South Africans on how to form legal entities in post-apartheid South Africa. She also volunteered as an after-school Math tutor for underserved children in Washington, D.C.
Federal Trade Commission v. Qualcomm
We represent Qualcomm in a case brought by the FTC alleging that Qualcomm had failed to license its standard-essential patents at fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) royalty rates and that Qualcomm had engaged in exclusionary conduct that increased its competitors’ costs and reduced their ability and incentive to innovate. Following a month-long bench trial, the district court issued an injunction that would have forced Qualcomm to license rival chip suppliers and renegotiate its existing licenses with cellphone makers. In August of 2020 the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s judgment and vacated the injunction.
In Re: Qualcomm Antitrust Litigation
We represent Qualcomm with respect to claims brought by a putative class of 250 million cellphone users alleging that Qualcomm inflated mobile device prices through its standard-essential patent licensing practices. We successfully overturned a nationwide class certification order before the Ninth Circuit and eliminated much of the case on a subsequent motion to dismiss.
State of California v. Sutter Health
We defended Sutter Health from an antitrust lawsuit filed by California’s Attorney General in San Francisco Superior Court. The suit alleges that Sutter exploited its size and reach to extract “illegally inflated prices” from insurers, employers, and patients.
01/17/2023
Keker, Van Nest & Peters is pleased to announce that the firm has elevated associates Bailey Heaps, Katie Lynn Joyce, and Chris Sun to Partners, and Kristin Hucek and Ian Kanig to Of Counsel, effective January 1, 2023. Read more
02/09/2022
The Daily Journal has included the firm's win, undoing class certification in an antitrust suit against Qualcomm, among the Top Appellate Reversals of 2021. Read more
December 31, 2019
When it came to challenging a controversial felony murder bill that went into effect Jan. 1, 2019, Southern California prosecutors took a harder line than many of their counterparts in the rest of the state. But since November, when the 4th District Court of Appeal published two opinions affirming the validity of SB 1437, the state's largest local prosecutor's office has stopped disputing the bill altogether. Read more