Randy Luskey

Luskey, a white collar criminal defense partner at Orrick, worked at the firm as an associate before an Orrick partner he regards as a mentor recruited him to follow her to the U.S. attorney's office.

"Melinda Haag came knocking on my door and asked me to join her," Luskey said. President Barack Obama had just appointed Haag to be the Northern District's top prosecutor. Luskey worked with Haag at the U.S. attorney's shop for several years before returning to Orrick in 2014. "So now I have seen both sides," he said. "I'm glad to have seen the AUSA side. I never saw myself as the prosecutor type, but it was great to be able to get on my feet for some jury trials there. I learned a ton."

Haag too returned to Orrick. "We coaxed her back, so now the band is together again," Luskey said.

Luskey is defending his alma mater, the University of California, against nine student class actions seeking tuition refunds following coronavirus-related campus closures--a potential exposure of hundreds of millions of dollars. The cases were filed in state and federal courts. Luskey filed his first motion to dismiss July 6, raising Eleventh Amendment immunity and other defenses. Brandmeyer v. The Regents of the University of California, 3:20-cv-02886 (N.D. Cal., filed April 27, 2020).

"As a proud Berkeley alum, it's an honor to be a trusted UC advisor," Luskey said.

Luskey, Haag and Orrick's lead white collar partner Walter F. Brown worked to win a complete "not guilty" jury verdict in February 2020 for client Katherine Mogal in a closely watched federal criminal trade secrets trial. Prosecutors accused her of taking valuable research with her when she left the now-defunct wearable products company Jawbone for rival Fitbit Inc. in 2015. U.S. v. Mogal, 18-cr-00259 (N.D. Cal., filed June 14, 2018).

At trial, Luskey blasted the government's case as a "reckless investigation" based on the faulty assumption that the defendant's failure to erase data on a computer backup system was criminal behavior. Prosecutors did not establish that the data at issue actually contained trade secrets or that Mogal used it at Fitbit, he contended.

Mogal's error was in not deleting the data when she left Jawbone. "Katy would be the first to admit it was a mistake," Luskey argued to the jury. "She forgot. That is not a federal crime." Jurors took less than three hours to agree.

In two other matters, Luskey was able to persuade federal prosecutors to not intervene in a federal qui tam action over alleged Medicare fraud, leading to dismissal of the case, and--in a rare occurrence--winning dismissal by prosecutors of previously-filed criminal visa, mail, loan and wire fraud charges against a client. He said he regretted not having been able to forestall the charges against Mogal.

"But I got two out of three," Luskey said. "I'll take that."

-- John Roemer