John Beisner

Partner

John Beisner is the Chair of O’Melveny’s firmwide Class Actions, Mass Torts, and Aggregated Litigation Practice.  John focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters, and other complex litigation in both federal and state courts.  Over the past 25 years, he has been involved in defending numerous major U.S. and foreign corporations in over 600 purported class actions filed in the federal and state courts of 40 states at both the trial and appellate court levels.  Those class actions have concerned a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment/discrimination, environmental, product-related, and securities class actions.  He has also handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on Multi-district Litigation, and has also been responsible for proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

John also regularly handles appellate litigation projects, having appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits, as well as the state appellate courts of Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, and West Virginia.  John is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues, and has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures, and judicial committees.   In recent years, he has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees.

Given the nature of his practice, John has been instrumental in managing numerous high visibility corporate crisis situations over the years, including media allegations of defects in consumer products, the ordering of consumer product recalls by NHTSA and the CPSC, lawsuits alleging company-wide employment discrimination, lawsuits alleging fraud in the health maintenance organization programs, lawsuits alleging the use of forced labor in foreign markets, the shutdown of a nuclear power plant by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and regulatory charges of improprieties in the financial services industry.  Serving in that crisis management role, John has dealt with intensive media coverage situations, congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, class action and mass tort litigation onslaughts, state attorney general inquiries, and General Accounting Office reviews.

A list of numerous published federal and state court decisions in which John has played a role is available on request. 

Professional Activities

Admitted to Practice, U.S. Supreme Court; U.S. Court of Appeals, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and District of Columbia Circuits
Member, American Bar Association; American Law Institute; ABA Class Actions Task Force
Participant, Litigation reform initiatives
Witness, Class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees and before state legislative committees
Writer and Lecturer, Class action and complex litigation issues