Diane M. Doolittle

Doolittle’s list of clients ranges from technology monoliths like Google LLC to online banking innovators like Paypal Holdings Inc.

Doolittle said she has a varied practice, consisting primarily of complex commercial litigation cases with an emphasis in soft intellectual property and trial work. She has also carved out a niche representing wealthy individuals in personal matters from high-end marital disputes to other personal affairs, she added.

The co-chair of Quinn Emanuel’s national trial practice has logged 72 trials over the last 25 years, winning well over 90 percent of them.

In an online advertising case in which Doolittle represented Google, the plaintiff, a San Francisco-based smoke shop, alleged that the Alphabet-owned subsidiary’s terms of use, which prohibit online payments processing sales of items such as drug paraphernalia and pornography, violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act in the context of internet services.

After learning that the smoke shop never actually signed up for Google’s services, Doolittle got the case dismissed after claiming they never suffered any concrete harm.

“You can’t just say that you feel bad,” Doolittle said. “You have to seek to obtain the benefits of the offering.” Abu Maisa, Inc. v. Google, Inc. et al., 15-cv-06338 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 31, 2015).

In another case in which Doolittle served as lead counsel for Pfizer Inc. in multiple trials alleging trade secret misappropriation by a nonprofit research entity, she was put on the case after the first trial, which was handled by another firm, resulted in a defeat. After appealing the verdict, Doolittle was able to get a jury to rule in Pfizer’s favor on 155 of 162 trade secrets, forcing the plaintiff to lower his demand from damages from $1 billion to $39 million.

Doolittle said she focused heavily on weaving a narrative the jury could buy into and added that she and her team did a good job on jury selection. They awarded the plaintiff just $165,000 after three weeks of trial. IREF v. Pfizer, Inc. et al., 2004-1-CV-026653 (Santa Clara Super. Ct., filed Sept. 10, 2004).

“I think an affirmative story is hard to tell when it’s a decade-old but telling it gave our jury an alternative to what the plaintiff said,” she said.

— Winston Cho