John B. Quinn

LOS ANGELES - Famous as a talented and innovative litigator, John B. Quinn is currently heavily involved in the high-profile antitrust suit against professional golf's PGA Tour brought by a new competitor called LIV Golf.

Quinn is co-counsel along with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Rachel Brass in representing the upstart tour and several well-known pro golfers. They have alleged that the PGA is threatening to permanently ban golfers who play in LIV tournaments from playing in PGA events, as well as threatening vendors who deal with LIV. Jones v. PGA Tour Inc., 5:22-cv- 04486 (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 3, 2022).

"We think it's a classic example of a monopolist taking anti-competitive actions to try to exclude the new entrant to the marketplace," he said.

Quinn also represents the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a sovereign wealth fund, which is the primary investor in LIV. It is not a party in the litigation, but the PGA Tour has subpoenaed the fund to produce financial records and other discovery. "It's a very broad document request," he said.

In other matters, Quinn last month obtained a multimillion-dollar arbitration award for companies owned by doctor and investor Patrick Soon-Shiong in a pair of disputes with San Diego's Sorrento Pharmaceuticals. The cases deal with Soon-Shiong's companies' purchase of a Sorrento chemotherapy drug.

Quinn said he and his firm also represent Soon-Shiong in several other matters.

In addition to those matters and other litigation, Quinn oversees the large law firm he founded. "It's a litigation firm," he said. "That's what we do." Lately, the firm's lawyers have been defending major companies against an increasing number of claims related to data, he said. "There has been an explosion of cases related to privacy issues, especially with regard to tech companies ... and also claims related to data breaches."

Quinn Emanuel's attorneys won a summary judgment motion on behalf of Google last month in litigation accusing the search giant of improperly collecting personal data from the Gmail accounts of users who had specifically chosen not to sync those accounts with their Google accounts. The issue has been appealed. Calhoun v. Google LLC, 4:20-cv-05146 (N.D. Cal., filed July 27, 2020).

Quinn launched the firm in downtown Los Angeles with three other lawyers in 1986. Now, it comprises 900 lawyers in 30 offices, half of them outside the U.S.

"We had a record year last year," he said.