Elizabeth M. Pipkin

San Jose

Business Litigation, Government & Civil Rights

As a partner at McManis Faulkner in San Jose, Elizabeth Pipkin specializes in technology, business disputes, trade secrets and civil rights -- even taking cases in business-entangled family law.

"I really don't have a lot of easy cases," she said. "I'm fortunate to have clients come to me with difficult issues, and I do enjoy the challenge. One of the things that I try to do to is bring in diverse team members who can really look at the situation from different angles. I like working with team members who are coming from different backgrounds, different experiences and aren't afraid to speak up if they think we need to go in a different direction or look at a certain issue that no one else has brought up before."

For instance, Seagate Technology has retained Pipkin for several complex cases, including in a consumer class action -- an omissions case under California's Unfair Competition law statute -- alleging that Seagate misrepresented and withheld information from consumers regarding the reliability of some of its hard drives.

"The client hired us after a reversal on appeal and asked us to take a new look and recommend the best strategy going forward," she said. "We thought we had a really good decertification argument because of changed circumstances."

Complicated issues arose related to quality assurance testing in the computer equipment manufacturing business, along with a consideration of probability statistics that engineers use during the durability testing phase for products.

"It took a lot to really simplify that and try to make that as understandable as possible," she said. "For the trial court, I think we did it successfully, and the court did grant our decertification motion [in August 2022]."

In U.S. v. Elizabeth Holmes, et al., a highly publicized lawsuit against the Theranos founder, Pipkin represented a former Theranos executive who testified as a witness near the end of 2021.

"She's a very lovely woman, one of the top lab people at Theranos, and had left the company a few years before," Pipkin said. "The government wanted her to testify in the case against Elizabeth Holmes, so I helped her through that process. ... It's certainly not something my client sought out at all, but I was glad that I could be there for her and help her navigate the process of testifying in a high-profile criminal trial."

Pipkin also served as president of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley from 2020-22, an organization dedicated to upholding the rights of underrepresented people in Silicon Valley. She remains on the Board, now focusing on ordinances and criminal actions that unfairly target individuals living in mobile homes.

-Kathryn Stelmach Artuso

-Kathryn Stelmach Artuso