Jennifer L. Keller

Keller is a founding partner at Keller/Anderle, a business trial firm she and managing partner Kay Anderle launched as a women-owned boutique in 2008. She represents plaintiffs and defendants in high-stakes commercial litigation and white collar cases.

She and her colleagues have carried on successfully during the coronavirus crisis, she said in a lightly edited email interview in late July.

“We closed the office in March 2020 and only recently reopened with everyone vaccinated. Before the pandemic we had already provided our lawyers with double monitors and ‘zero client’ home setups, which allow them to sign on directly to our cloud-based system. Our people took dozens of Zoom depositions. In short, we adapted beautifully and have continued to flourish.”

She recently assumed representation of the longtime former headmaster of The Thatcher School in Ojai, Michael Mulligan, following a sexual abuse investigation that did not accuse him of abuse but criticized his response. “We feel he is being treated unfairly and is being scapegoated by the school, which he helped transform into one of the nation’s premier boarding schools,” Keller said.

A scheduled epic malpractice suit for client CashCall Inc. against its law firm settled in early August on the eve of trial. CashCall Inc. v. Katten Muchin Roseman LLP, 30-2017-00914968 (O.C. Super. Ct., filed April 4, 2017).

Keller was philosophical. “Trial lawyers love jury trials, so when we think we have a great case we’re always a bit disappointed when it settles,” she said. “But the best interest of the client trumps our love of courtroom battles.”

A current marquee case involves Keller’s defense of actor Kevin Spacey, accused in a $40 million civil suit of sexual assault sometime in the 1980s by two men, Anthony Rapp and a plaintiff who sought to proceed only as “C.D.” Rapp and C.D. v. Kevin Spacey Fowler aka Kevin Spacey, 1:20-cv-09586 (S.D. N.Y., filed Nov. 13, 2020).

In June 2021 Keller obtained C.D.’s dismissal after he declined the judge’s order to refile his complaint in his true name. Rapp remains a plaintiff, but Keller said her defenses are strong. “His decades-old claims have been increasingly discredited with new witness depositions as major inconsistencies and impossibilities emerge. We intend to prove the incident he describes never happened and the $40 million he seeks should not be awarded.”

- John Roemer