Simona A. Agnolucci

When Willkie opened its San Francisco office in September 2019, Agnolucci was tapped to co-lead and build the office, which now has 25 attorneys in a variety of practice groups.

"Our core practice is litigation, and that's the practice we grew first. But over time, we've added private equity transactional work, an insurance regulatory practice and executive compensation," she said. "We've also deepened our litigation bench. We've added a patent litigation group and expanded offerings to securities and additional trade secret litigation."

Agnolucci, who is also a member of the firm's executive committee, represents technology companies, investors and individuals in a wide variety of complex commercial matters including class actions, trade secret disputes, regulatory matters and white-collar criminal defense.

She currently represents a large tech company in a lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Arizona, alleging that the company used deceptive and unfair practices to obtain users' location data. The complaint asks the court to force the company to provide monetary relief and remove algorithms created with the data. The attorneys general of three additional states and the District of Columbia followed the initial complaint with suits of their own. The first case is scheduled to go to trial this fall.

Early this year, Agnolucci won an appeal of a successful trial verdict in a consumer class action for Public Storage Inc. Perez et al. v. Public Storage No. BC611584 (Cal. Super., filed on Feb. 24, 2016); No. B305611 (Cal. App., filed Feb. 27, 2022). The suit claimed that Public Storage led tenants to believe they had to buy rental insurance through the company, violating California's Unfair Competition Law.

Agnolucci led the trial team that resulted in the total defense verdict for Public Storage, and argued the winning appeal in the Second District of the California Court of Appeal.

"It's a very rare class action that goes to trial. This was one of a handful in California in the surrounding years," she said. "I appreciated that the client was willing to try a case, even when the stakes were high. Most class actions settle, but we believed in this case and in our ability to win it."

Agnolucci doesn't shy away from bold moves when she believes in the merits of a case. In another recent matter, she represented LinkedIn in a consumer class action that claimed the networking platform did not clearly present the renewal terms of its subscription-based products and services, and failed to offer a clear cancellation policy. Mendez v. LinkedIn Corp. No. 21-CV-378575 (Cal. Super., filed March 24, 2021).

"Our strategy was to go aggressively straight to the merits," Agnolucci said. "We filed an early motion for summary judgment, and we did it out of the gate. After we filed our motion, they dismissed the case.

"Had we gone down a more traditional route of demurrer and slowly making our way to the merits, we might've gotten to the same place a year later. This was a way to navigate an efficient resolution for our client."

-Jennifer Chung Klam