Elliot R. Peters

As he has for many years, Elliot R. Peters is litigating a wide variety of cases in a wide variety of places.

He is representing a half-dozen major law firms against malpractice and fraud claims in New York, the Midwest and in California. He has criminal matters in New York and New Jersey. He has clients caught up in regulatory matters with the FTC and the Justice Department. And he is defending clients in commercial disputes set in California that also have important international aspects.

“I like the variety that I have in my practice,” Peters said. “I’ve been at it for about 40 years now, and I still think it’s fun and interesting, and I think the variety of cases contributes a lot to that.”

In his most high-profile recent matter, Peters defended the PGA Tour against antitrust claims brought by several well-known golfers and the Saudi-funded LIV Golf Inc. Jones v. PGA Tour, 5:22-cv-04486, (N.D. Cal., filed Aug. 3, 2022).

The litigation was resolved last year. But the PGA Tour is widely reported to be pursuing a deal with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which was behind LIV Golf. Peters is still very involved in the matter because “the Department of Justice has made it pretty clear that they would want to look closely at any such deal for purposes of compliance with the antitrust laws,” he said.

He also is defending an online commercial real estate marketplace in copyright and antitrust litigation in Los Angeles. The highly contentious maneuvering included wide-ranging allegations attacking his clients’ work with vendors in India. Late last year, Peters’ team effectively forced the plaintiff to strike those allegations from its amended complaint. CoStar Group Inc. v. Commercial Real Estate Exchange, 2:20-cv-08819 (C.D. Cal., filed Sept. 25, 2020).

In a newer matter, he and other Keker attorneys are defending AviaGames — which offers online mobile games in which players compete to win real money — against patent, antitrust and consumer class action litigation. The company is accused of misleading its customers into playing against computer bots disguised as players to make the games difficult to win. Pandolfi v. AviaGames Inc. 5:23-cv-05971 (N.D. Cal., filed Nov. 17, 2023).

— Don DeBenedictis