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. He has represented clients in several federal and state appellate courts, in cases involving punitive damages, class action, employment, product liability, insurance, intellectual property, securities, and constitutional litigation. Mr. Evanson also regularly appears in trial courts in connection with a wide variety of general commercial litigation.
Recent representative appellate matters include obtaining reversal from the Federal Circuit in a patent case involving California's Unfair Competition Law; obtaining reversal from the D.C. Circuit of a district court's dismissal on standing grounds; securing interlocutory review from the Ninth Circuit of a major wage-and-hour class action; 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. In the trial court, Mr. Evanson has obtained dismissal on the pleadings of state-wide and nationwide putative class actions, in cases involving claims under the wage-and-hour and consumer-protection laws. And he has helped defeat claims for punitive damages at various stages of trial, as well as on appeal.
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. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business 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. Mr. Evanson was named a "Rising Star" in the area of appellate litigation by the 2010 and 2011 Southern California "Superlawyers" editions of Los Angeles Magazine. And he 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.