Reuben Camper Cahn

Cahn spent a quarter of a century as a federal public defender in Miami and San Diego, including leading the latter office for more than a dozen years.

Along the way, he obtained habeas corpus releases for Guantánamo detainees, argued twice before the U.S. Supreme Court and co-defended Jared L. Loughner, the man whose 2011 shooting spree killed six people and wounded 13, including former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Gifford of Arizona.

Early in his defender career, Cahn won a not-guilty verdict for a man facing the death penalty in federal court, which his firm describes as the first such acquittal in the modern era.

Now, he is preparing for a trial in which he and partner Jennifer L. Keller will defend a Newport Beach businessman charged in the “Varsity Blues” college admission scandal. The government accuses I-Hin “Joey” Chen of paying to have his son’s answers on the ACT exam changed. U.S. v Colburn, 1:19-cr-10080 (D. Mass, filed March 12, 2019)

Cahn says the evidence against his client is so weak it’s all but nonexistent. “The government’s taken a very aggressive position.”

Chen will be one of six defendants in the trial, who are all charged as members of a “rimless hub and spoke” conspiracy, in which most alleged conspirators dealt with one central figure but not each other. That aspect of the case has already been heavily litigated, Cahn said, and will be again during the trial, currently set for April.

Since joining Keller/Anderle two years ago, Cahn also has been handling civil cases. One of them is much like a criminal case, he said, but from the prosecution side.

He and Keller are set for trial in August against Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP and a former partner, who they say lured their client, CashCall Inc., into a flawed scheme to acquire consumer loans cloaked with immunity from state usury laws. Damages could exceed $500 million.

“It will be the largest legal malpractice case ever to go to trial in the United States,” Cahn said. “It’s a fun case for me [because] it feels like prosecuting a giant fraud case.” CashCall, Inc. v. Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, 30-2017-00914968 (Orange Co. Supr. Ct., filed April 14, 2017).

— Don DeBenedictis