John C. Hueston

NEWPORT BEACH - John C. Hueston says his firm is doing very well filling its niche handling business trials. Hueston himself is doing extremely well at it.

"I had more trials in the last two years than I had in any other two-year period of my life," he said. He handled six trials in those years, more even than when he was a federal prosecutor.

Among those six were some significant victories, including what he described as the largest trademark award in U.S. history, the largest unfair business practices Lanham Act jury award in U.S. history and "the only opioids trial that resulted in a win for an opioid manufacturer." The first two were against the same opponent, Vital Pharmaceuticals, which makes Bang energy drinks.

Hueston represented Monster Energy in those. In the first, it asserted that Bang Energy's claim that its drinks contained a "super" version of the muscle-building supplement creatine were false. "But in truth and in fact, they simply sprinkled something that wasn't creatine at all into the drink and misled the marketplace," he said. Jurors awarded Monster $293 million in September. Monster Energy Co. v. Vital Pharmaceuticals Inc., 18-cv-01882 (C.D. Cal., filed Sept. 4, 2018).

While that case was still in litigation, the makers of the whipped juice drink Orange Bang approached Monster to help it go after Bang for reneging on an old name agreement. Last April, an arbitrator awarded the little company $175 million against Vital plus an ongoing 5% royalty. Orange Bang and Monster will split the proceeds equally.

In the opioids case, Hueston was one of four lead attorneys defending four drugmakers against a $52 million public-nuisance lawsuit brought by the city of Oakland and L.A., Orange and Santa Clara counties. Their November 2021 victory was a Daily Journal Top Verdict last year. People v. Purdue Pharma, 30- 14-00725287 (O.C. Super. Ct., filed May 21, 2014).

Midway through the monthslong trial, Hueston had to leave for a week to try a patent case in Texas. "That's how crazy the trial schedule was," he said. Hueston won $25 million in May 2021 for a La Jolla-based semiconductor technology firm. Acorn Semi LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co., 2:19-cv-00347 (E.D. Tex., filed Oct. 23, 2019).

His other trial wins recently include rebuffing a wrongful termination suit by a former auditor and alleged whistleblower against PricewaterhouseCoopers and a $5.1 million arbitration award for Canadian investors in a Napa Valley winery defrauded by the prominent CEO they'd hired.

Coming up could be a trial defending McDonald's against allegations of racism over how it handles advertising with comedian Byron Allen's TV channels.

"I have enough trial opportunities that I typically swing from trial prep and trial to the next trial prep and trial," Hueston said.