Jan Nielsen Little

Little, a Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP partner, is a white collar criminal defense lawyer focused on high-stakes criminal investigations and complex civil litigation.

She has been representing venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc., in litigation in Texas and Mississippi after Khosla backed a biofuel startup called KiOR to support clean energy technology. When the company declared bankruptcy, Khosla and company executives were sued for fraud. Little successfully moved to dismiss related claims in Texas, where the judge took the unusual step of dismissing the claims without leave to amend. The Mississippi case is pending. Little has filed motions to dismiss; Jurisdictional issues are being argued before the Mississippi Supreme Court. Carlton v. Cannon, 4:15-cv-00012 (S.D. Tex., filed Aug. 20, 2013).

For the country’s biggest liquor distributor, she won six summary judgment motions in a multimillion dollar civil case on claims of wrongful termination, antitrust and various unfair business practices, resulting in a final judgment in her client’s favor. The result is on appeal. Weisman v. Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, 50-2014-CA-010213-XXXX-MB (Palm Beach Cty., Fla., Cir. Ct., filed Aug. 19, 2014).

Lawyers typically don’t talk much about their losses, but Little is open about the big setback she and John W. Keker suffered in April 2018 when a federal jury convicted their client, the former chief financial officer of a major British software maker, on all 16 criminal counts of wire and securities fraud in connection with the company’s 2011 sale to Hewlett Packard Co. for $10.3 billion.

“Although I am proud of my work in that trial, sometimes lawyers lose cases,” said Little. “And it’s a real blow to lose. All you can do is keep fighting.” U.S. v. Hussain, 3:16-cr-0462 (N.D. Cal., filed Nov. 10, 2016).

The case remains high on her docket, and on her mind. “It’s been a very long slog,” Little said. She acted as Keker’s second chair.

“It was the most difficult and time-consuming matter I worked on last year, and in fact it was the most difficult trial I’ve done in 35 years of trying cases. There were 12 million pages of documents produced in discovery and the trial itself involved over 2,000 exhibits.” She added, “It was the Hussain case that consumed most of my time—and heart and soul—last year.”

— John Roemer