The Daily Journal has named partners John Keker, Bob Van Nest, & Elliot Peters among its list of Top 100 Lawyers in California for 2019.
Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP lead name partner John W. Keker is a veteran of decades of jury trials in white collar criminal cases, complex commercial and intellectual property litigation as well as securities and antitrust matters. He’s currently battling for reduced bail and a new trial for client Sushovan Hussain, a former Autonomy Corp. chief financial officer convicted last year following a nine-week trial and sentenced to five years in prison for accounting fraud against Hewlett-Packard Co. in its acquisition of Hussain’s United Kingdom-based firm. Also on Keker’s docket is client Wetlands Preservation Foundation’s suit against the California Department of Water Resources and The Nature Conservancy over their alleged mismanagement of an island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The complaint contends that the defendants’ acts threaten the long-term viability of the 9,000 acre Staten Island, northwest of Stockton, and its wintering sandhill crane population.
Bob Van Nest specializes in translating the technical and deconstructing the complex to connect with judges and juries in cases with billions at stake. Among his longest-running cases pits his talents as a technology copyright trial lawyer defending Google LLC against claims by Oracle America Inc. that Google infringed on its Java application programming interface packages. The case, originally filed in 2010, currently awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on his petition for certiorari. Van Nest persuaded two different federal juries to see the issue Google’s way, but both those outcomes were reversed on appeal. A sign the high court may take up the matter came in April 2019 when the justices invited the Solicitor General to brief the views of the U.S. government. One of Van Nest’s biggest trials came in January 2019 when, representing Qualcomm Inc., he served as lead counsel in shepherding a team that included lawyers from Keker; Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP; Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Norton Rose Fulbright LLP defending the chipmaker against claims by the Federal Trade Commission that it failed to fairly license its patents.
Elliot Peters, a name partner with Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, specializes in white collar criminal defense and professional liability cases. Among his current clients are Genentech Inc.; SPI Holdings; the former CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, Christopher Lischewski; John and Ines Crosby, former executives of the Rolling Hills Casino; John Wessman, the developer of Town & Country Plaza in Palm Springs; and Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong. For Genentech, Peters last fall filed a trade secret theft suit alleging that several of its former scientists stole confidential and proprietary information to help a foreign company develop biosimilar versions of its medicines Rituxan, Herceptin, Avastin and Pulmozyme. Peters is defending key individuals associated with the development of the 58-story Millennium Tower luxury condominiums on San Francisco’s Mission Street facing multiple lawsuits over its rate of settlement — about 16 inches to date — its two-inch tilt, and the claim that the developer did not disclose that information to potential home buyers.
Read their profiles here.