Quyen L. Ta 

Quyen L. Ta credits the wide variety of litigation she handles in part to spending two years as a law clerk to the late U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton in Sacramento. Federal judges handle every sort of case, and so their clerks must as well. Now as a litigation partner now, Ta said she often chooses attorneys who themselves were former federal law clerks for the litigation teams she works with.

The cases they have been handling lately include an unusual employment class action, a multimillion-dollar contract arbitration from the tech industry, patent and copyright cases, and a pro bono civil rights fight with a municipality.

“My goal is always to help my clients and their businesses thrive. That’s where I really find a lot of joy,” she said. “I like to try to understand my clients’ businesses and then try to resolve their problems.”

If she can, Ta tries to resolve her clients’ concerns short of litigation. If she can’t do that, then she focuses on motion practice to dispose of a case early.

“Litigation is a cost center,” she said. “What we try to do is be as efficient as possible and get the result that the client needs so that they can go back to building their business.”

A good example of that approach, she said, is a very unusual wage-and-hour class action she is defending for Walmart. The lead plaintiff was never a Walmart employee in the traditional sense. Instead, she asserts that her voluntary use of self-checkout kiosks at Walmart stores constituted compensable work under California law. Russell v. Walmart Inc., 4:22-cv-02813 (N.D. Cal., filed May 12, 2022).

“Obviously, we disagree with the theory,” she said. “But if a judge decides it in the wrong way, it could have a huge negative impact.”

Ta and her team realized they had to write a motion to dismiss that was as strong as the plaintiff’s theory was novel. The judge granted their motion, but with leave to amend, so they filed a new one in response to the plaintiff’s amended complaint. They’re waiting for the judge’s decision.

On the IP side of her practice, she was co-lead counsel for a software company sued for patent infringement by a competitor. Ta won a motion for judgment on the pleadings under Section 101, and the Federal Circuit affirmed in April. People.ai v. SetSail Technology, 22-1136 (Fed. Circ., dec’d April 7, 2023).

She also is handling a consumer class action challenging the amount and quality of protein in a popular brand of bread. Ta counters that people buy the bread not for the protein but “because they like all those grains.” The case is still in discovery. Swartz v. Dave’s Killer Bread, Inc. and Flowers Foods, Inc., 4:21-cv-10053 (N.D. Cal., filed Dec. 29, 2021).

— Don DeBenedictis