Nanci E. Nishimura 

Nanci E. Nishimura is a partner at the plaintiff-side litigation firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP. Her practice focuses on antitrust and business cases. She’s been with the firm since 2002.

She’s also co-chair of the Leaders Forum, a White House initiative to raise the profile of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

As part of that work, Nishimura was in Washington, D.C., in early May to attend a White House movie night for a screening of the series “American Born Chinese.”

“The cast was there and it was a lot of fun,” Nishimura said. “It’s time for the Asian American community to get more noticed.”

She pointed out that her mother, now 92, was held in an internment camp at the Santa Anita racetrack in Los Angeles; her story is included in a documentary released last August titled “Being Asian in America.”

Nishimura also serves on the Commission on Judicial Performance, where she was the first woman non-judge to be elected chair.

In December, she achieved a landmark ruling in a COVID-19 insurance lawsuit for her client, the San Francisco restaurant John’s Grill. Although the parties had settled the matter, a 1st District Court of Appeal panel held that a trial judge wrongly sustained the insurer’s demurrer without leave to amend. John’s Grill Inc. et al. v. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. et al., A162709 (1st DCA, op. filed Dec. 27, 2022).

John’s Grill features in Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 detective novel, “The Maltese Falcon;” the place has a statue of the bird in an upstairs dining room. Like the book’s elusive winged character, insurance payouts for COVID-related losses have been long sought but hard to get.

The panel noted that most COVID business interruption coverage appeals across the U.S. have failed, but held that a “twist in this case” involves a specified causes clause that transforms a grant of coverage for virus-caused loss or damage “into an empty promise.” That makes the contract unenforceable under the illusory coverage doctrine, the panel concluded.

Nishimura and her firm called it Hartford’s “heads I win, tails you lose” policy interpretation. “Insurers can talk out of both sides of their mouth,” Nishimura said. “This case focused attention on the importance of precise policy language.”

In another marquee case, Nishimura is on the plaintiff executive committee in a consolidated antitrust class action accusing Google LLC of anticompetitive behavior in the apps market. The class has been certified. In re: Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation, MDL 2981 (N.D. Cal., filed Nov. 5, 2020).

“We’ve won some discovery sanctions, and trial is set for November,” Nishimura said.

— John Roemer