Joseph W. Cotchett

BURLINGAME - Joseph W. Cotchett, the founding partner of the plaintiff-side litigation boutique Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, ended 2022 by receiving a major award from the American Board of Trial Advocates and by achieving a rare win over insurers for a restaurant's COVID-19 business losses.

He began 2023 with a successfully-amended complaint that led a federal judge to revive part of a massive antitrust suit against Qualcomm Inc.

Cotchett also donated a substantial sum to his alma mater, the newly-renamed UC College of the Law, San Francisco. Part of the gift, $1.5 million, funded four law students' summer of providing free legal assistance to Northern California Indigenous communities.

He also gave $250,000 to a San Mateo County nonprofit environmental preservation group, Green Foothills. Earlier, he'd worked pro bono for the Surfrider Foundation on successful litigation over public access to Martin's Beach, a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Explaining his generosity, he pointed out that you can't take it with you. "I have a theory that the pants you wear in heaven have no pockets," he said. "If you can help people in the here and-now, why not?"

In December, Cotchett was the recipient of The American Board of Trial Advocates' first David B. Lynch Legends Award. The group's San Francisco chapter presented the honor in memory of Lynch, a longtime leader of the group, who died in 2022.

For client and friend John Konstin, the owner of San Francisco's venerable John's Grill, Cotchett attained one of the first wins against a major insurer on coverage for pandemic losses. The underwriter agreed to settle Konstin's business interruption claims following Cotchett's argument as he appealed a negative trial court ruling. John's Grill Inc. et al. v. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. et al., A162709 (1st DCA, op. filed. Dec. 27, 2022).

"Everyone else who tried this got turned down, but that didn't stop me," Cotchett said. "Hartford's lawyers came into the hearing with big smiles on their faces, but after they heard me and the panel discuss the case, they called me the next morning offering to settle."

The settlement - for an undisclosed sum - wasn't the end of it, however. In an unusual move, the appellate panel issued an opinion even after it was informed of the deal because the case raised issues "of continuing public interest which are likely to recur," wrote Associate Justice Jon B. Streeter for the panel, quoting from another case.

Streeter and colleagues found that the John's Grill policy had virus coverage and that the insurer's argument that it did not apply was invalid because the cited exclusion clause was so broad as to make it unenforceable under the illusory coverage doctrine.

"You go after corporate America often enough, sometimes you win," Cotchett said. "That opinion has gone viral, and I'm getting calls from everyone from an Illinois small business group to the L.A. restaurant association."

In Cotchett's multidistrict antitrust case against Qualcomm, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline S. Corley of San Francisco ruled that the class' allegations of the defendant's exclusive dealing with Apple Inc. can go forward. In re: Qualcomm Antitrust Litigation, 3:17-md-02773 (N.D. Cal., filed April 6, 2017).