PRESENTERS

Peter Afrasiabi
Partner, One, LLP, Newport Beach, CA
Peter is a founding partner at One, LLP, and focuses his practice on copyright, patent, trademark and entertainment litigation. In addition, he is a professor and the Director of the Appellate Clinic at University of California, Irvine School of Law. Peter graduated from University of California, Los Angeles and University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
Greg Dorst
Southern California Consultant to The Other Bar, Certified Addition Specialist, Riverside, CA
Greg is a former prosecutor and defense attorney who currently works full time in the recovery field. He is a Certified Addiction Specialist, frequent lecturer on chemical dependency and a trainer of staff at recovery and treatment facilities. Greg is also the Southern California Consultant to The Other Bar.
Theane Evangelis
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Los Angeles, CA
Theane focuses on class actions and appellate litigation. She serves as Co-Chair of the firm's Class Actions Practice Group and Vice Chair of the California Appellate Practice Group. She has played a substantial role in a wide range of appellate, constitutional, and crisis management matters, as well as employment, consumer, and wage-and- hour class actions. Theane clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Honorable Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit after graduating summa cum laude from New York University School of Law. The Daily Journal has named her to its list of Top Women Lawyers in California, and Law360 has named her a Class Action MVP.
Paul Fraidenburgh
Shareholder, Buchalter, Orange County, CA

Paul Fraidenburgh is a trial lawyer who serves as Chair of Litigation for Buchalter’s Orange County office. He focuses his practice on representing clients in high-stakes commercial litigation, arbitration, and regulatory compliance matters. Paul has prevailed on behalf of clients in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and at the state Supreme Court level. He has also served as lead trial counsel in California and beyond. He represents clients ranging from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies. In 2018, Paul was named a “Top 40 Under 40” lawyer by the Daily Journal, as one of only 20 lawyers selected from Southern California. Paul has also served as an active member of several firm committees. As a member of the Pro Bono Committee, he has volunteered his time to organizations that serve underprivileged children.

Rex Heinke
Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, Los Angeles, CA
Rex is co-head of the firm's Supreme Court and appellate practice. He has argued almost a hundred and fifty appeals in federal and state courts throughout the country, involving, among other things, television camera access to courtrooms, alter ego, antitrust, attorneys’ fees, bankruptcy, billboards, class actions, complex business disputes, computer software, constitutional law, contracts, copyrights, criminal sentencing, defamation, docudramas, domestic and international arbitrations, drug testing, employment discrimination, environmental law, extraterritoriality of federal laws, false advertising, federal preemption, federal securities, foreign sovereign immunity, global warming, invasion of privacy, partition of real estate, personal jurisdiction/inconvenient forum, products liability, public records, reporters’ privilege, right of publicity, separation of powers, statutory interpretation, tax, telephone regulation, trademarks, trusts and estates, unfair competition, unsolicited faxes, wage and hour disputes, and wrongful termination. Recently, he has handled appeals or writs in the Second, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and D.C. Circuits, the California Supreme Court, and the California Courts of Appeal, as well as cert. petitions in the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a fellow of the American and California Academies of Appellate Lawyers. Rex has lectured and written on appellate law for the University of Southern California, University of Houston, and University of California at Davis law schools. He has won numerous awards, including Best Lawyers in America’s L.A. Appellate Lawyer of the Year (2010), California Lawyer’s Lawyer of the Year (2009 and 2013), and Top 10 Southern California Super Lawyers (2014). He is a former member of the California Judicial Council and the California State Bar Board of Governors, and a past President of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.
Jim Heiting
Former President, State Bar of California (2005-2006), Partner, Heiting & Irwin, Riverside, CA
Jim is a trial attorney and managing partner of Heiting & Irwin in Riverside, California. He is a former President of the State Bar of California, the Riverside County Bar Association, and The Other Bar.
William Highberger
Judge, California Superior Court, Complex Civil Litigation Program, Los Angeles, CA
Judge Highberger has been assigned to the Los Angeles Superior Court Complex Civil Litigation Program since March 2008. His docket primarily consists of class actions, complex civil cases, Judicial Council Coordinated Proceedings involving multiple tort claims from around the state and the nation, and other types of complex civil litigation. The substantial majority of his docket since 2013 has been wage-and- hour class actions. He and his colleagues in the Los Angeles Superior Court Complex Civil Litigation Program have one of the largest wage-and- hour class action dockets in the entire nation. He routinely deals with contested motions to compel arbitration in this context and frequently teaches other judges about this topic in CLE programs. He also routinely hears motions for approval of wage-and- hour class action settlements and other class-action settlements. While handling various mass-tort cases, he has held joint court sessions with the United States District Judge handling the counterpart MDL case involving In re Incretin Mimetics. He has also worked in cooperation with the Court of Common Pleas Judge in Philadelphia to facilitate the handling of overlapping mass-tort claims involving the prescription drug Risperdal®. He has been a judge since September 1998. He is a Fellow of the College Of Labor And Employment Lawyers, a Member of the American Law Institute and an Adviser to the ALI’s recently completed RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW, EMPLOYMENT LAW. He is also an Adviser to the ALI’s current project to draft a RESTATEMENT OF THE LAW, LIABILITY INSURANCE. Before his appointment to the court in September 1998, he was a partner in the labor and employment practice of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Los Angeles, CA and Washington, DC, where he handled both traditional labor-management disputes and individual and class litigation in state and federal court.
CARRIE MENKEL-MEADOW
CHANCELLOR’S PROFESSOR OF LAW AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE, AND A.B. CHETTLE JR. PROFESSOR OF LAW, DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND CIVIL PROCEDURE EMERITA AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER
Professor Menkel-Meadow is one of the founders of the modern legal dispute resolution field and has been teaching negotiation, mediation and related subjects for over 35 years. She has published over 15 books and 200 articles in the field. She has taught law and dispute resolution to diplomats, lawyers, law students, mediators, government officials and ordinary citizens in 26 countries (on seven continents). She is an active mediator and arbitrator, as well as policy and strategic planning facilitator, and has consulted for the World Bank, United Nations, the Federal Judicial Center and federal and state courts, and the International Red Cross on matters of conflict resolution and dispute system design. Professor Menkel-Meadow graduated cum laude Juris Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, magna cum laude, B.A. (in sociology) and Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College, Columbia University.
David Malow
Lead Alumni Volunteer, Betty Ford Center / Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, Palm Desert, CA
A former owner of Serenity Lane Transitional Sober Living Homes, David received his certification as a Peer Recovery Support Specialist while working at The Riverside County Department of Mental Health in 2010. In 2009, David worked as a consultant to the Betty Ford Center and wrote the policies and procedures manual for their BFCSL Sober Living program. He received a scholarship from The Betty Ford Center to obtain his certification as a Grief Recovery Specialist at the Grief Recovery Institute in Los Angeles in 2008. Since 2005, David has been the lead alumni volunteer at the Betty Ford Center / Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, having served for over 5,000 hours. In 2009 David was a consultant to the Betty Ford Center for their BFCSL Sober Living program. A lifelong resident of Southern California, David is married to Joey Malow and has a son. David enjoys long-term sobriety & is a current member of CAADAC, CCAR, Recovery View, and The Sober Living Network.
Zach McGee
Senior Vice President, Business Affairs, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment,Los Angeles, CA
Zach leads worldwide business affairs for Sony’s home entertainment division. Before moving to Sony, he was the Senior Vice President, Head of Business & Legal Affairs at Miramax, a leading independent film and television studio. Before joining Miramax, Zach was a Vice President, Legal Affairs, with NBC Universal, Inc. Prior to moving in-house, he was an associate with Davis Polk. Zach clerked for the Honorable Michael B. Mukasey, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he received his Masters of Business Administration from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Zach also has taught negotiation ethics for lawyers as an Adjunct Professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University.
Tom McNamara
DIRECTOR, BUSINESS AND LEGAL AFFAIRS, ENTERTAINMENT ONE TELEVISION, BEVERLY HILLS, CA
Tom is a Director of Business and Legal Affairs for Entertainment One (eOne) Television. He negotiates deals and drafts contracts for eOne Television to secure the services of above-the-line talent through the development and production of television projects. Specifically, Tom prepares option/purchase agreements, pilot script agreements, and executive producer agreements, among other agreements. In addition, he has drafted record label licensing agreements, publishing agreements, and management employment contracts for musicians and songwriters with companies such as Kobalt, Red One Publishing, Mr. 305, Inc., Budde Publishing, Single Lock Records, Nevado Music, and Red Light Management. Tom is acutely familiar with royalty structures, publishing rights, ancillary rights, and licensing arrangements on both the record label and publishing sides of the music industry. Furthermore, he is a former business and commercial litigator with comprehensive litigation experience through trial and binding arbitration.
Howard Miller
Partner, Girardi Keese, Los Angeles, CA
Howard heads the firm's International Dispute Resolution Practice, and practices intellectual property litigation, anti-trust, and general complex commercial litigation. He is a Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb). Howard is also a former Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law. He served as the 85th President of the State Bar of California during the 2009-2010 term.
Aaron Moss
Partner, Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP, Los Angeles, CA
Aaron is a Partner with Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP, in Los Angeles. He handles a variety of entertainment litigation, intellectual property and general commercial matters, specializing in protecting the rights of owners and users of creative works. Aaron litigates high-profile copyright infringement actions for both plaintiffs and defendants, including studios, independent distributors, production companies, video game publishers, technology firms and individuals. He also counsels clients on all aspects of copyright law, including chain of title and clearance reviews, ownership transfers, license termination, copyright preemption, fair use, music sampling and internet piracy. Aaron has particularly extensive experience with the Copyright Act’s statutory termination provisions, and has litigated cases involving numerous entertainment properties when authors’ heirs have sought to recapture copyrights under these statutes. He has been named to The Hollywood Reporter’s “Top 100 Power Lawyers” list, Variety’s “Legal Impact Report,” and to the Daily Journal’s “Top IP Litigators in California” for the last five years in a row. Aaron is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, Phi Beta Kappa, and a magna cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School.
Bill O'Brien
Partner, One, LLP, Beverly Hills, CA
Bill is a trial and appellate lawyer with 30 years of experience in intellectual property and technology cases. He has extensive experience with patent, trademark, trade dress, copyright, trade secret, and idea submission cases and with a wide range of technologies, including medical devices, consumer electronics, telecommunications, software, optics, aerospace, manufacturing equipment, diagnostics, and chemicals, as well as business-method patents. Bill has successfully represented clients in major jury trials and in multiple appellate proceedings before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and other federal and state appellate courts.
Cliff Palefsky
Partner, McGuinn, Hillsman & Palefsky, San Francisco, CA
Cliff has argued seven arbitration cases before the California Supreme Court including numerous landmark and precedent setting cases such as Armendariz v. Foundation Health Psychcare, Little v. Auto Stiegler, Gentry v. Circuit City and Sonic-Calabasas v. Moreno. He was also co-counsel in Circuit City v Adams, Duffield v Robertson Stevens and EEOC v Luce Forward and has been very involved in helping to draft legislation relating to arbitration at the state and federal levels. He was a founding board member of the National Employment Lawyers Association and served on its Executive Board for 10 years. He is the co-chair of NELA’s Mandatory Arbitration Task Force and was co-chair of the Privacy, ADR and Securities Industry Arbitration Committees. He also served on the Executive Board of the California Employment Lawyers Association for 12 years and is presently on the organization’s Advisory Board. Cliff was an advisor to the American Law Institute on the drafting of the Restatement of Employment Law and is a co-author of the CEB’s Wrongful Employment Termination Practice treatise. He is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and has authored numerous articles on employment law and mandatory arbitration. He is a frequent speaker nationally on subjects relating to employment law and the field of arbitration.
Ted Russell
Executive Vice President, Business Affairs, Digital, Home Entertainment and Television Distribution, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Los Angeles, CA
Ted has been responsible for negotiating strategic partnerships and deals for the distribution of film and television content in digital and traditional media. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President, Litigation, for Fox Entertainment Group, handling all manner of legal problems faced by Fox's film, television, cable, sports and Internet properties. Ted has substantial experience litigating in state and federal courts. He has lectured on topics ranging from electronic discovery to crisis management. But his true academic interest arises in the context of negotiations, and specifically the legal, ethical, and practical limitations imposed on lawyers participating in negotiations. Ted has served as a Lecturer in Law at USC Gould School of Law, where he taught a course in Negotiation Ethics, and as an Adjunct Professor at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University. Before joining Fox in 1998, he was a business and employment litigator at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
John Tehranian
Partner, One, LLP, Newport Beach, CA
John is a founding partner of One LLP and the Paul W. Wildman Chair and Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School. A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, John has litigated numerous high-profile lawsuits, including copyright, trademark and right of publicity disputes involving Madonna, Don Henley, B.B. King, Bettie Page, Jimi Hendrix, and Perez Hilton, among others. Variety’s 2013 Legal Impact Report recognized him as one of the world’s top 50 entertainment lawyers and he has been repeatedly honored as a Southern California Super Lawyer. John’s writing has been widely cited, from testimony before Congress and decisions of the state, federal and Israeli courts to briefs before the Supreme Court in such landmark intellectual property cases as MGM v. Grokster, Tiffany v. eBay, Golan v. Holder and Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons.
John Wagner
Judicate West, Los Angeles, CA
John Leo Wagner has 29 years' experience in conducting ADR processes. In 1997, he left the Federal bench to become the Director of the Irell & Manella ADR Center, where he engaged in a full-time practice as a neutral. He previously served for 12 years as a U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Northern District of Oklahoma. He was appointed to this position at age 31, after trying many substantial cases to verdict as litigation partner with Kornfeld & Franklin. While on the Federal bench, he founded and administered a court-annexed mediation program and served as an ADR neutral, in addition to maintaining a full civil caseload. Judge Wagner has successfully conducted thousands of mediations and arbitrations. He is respected and requested for his extensive experience and skill in resolving multi-party, and extremely complex issues in cases involving intellectual property, construction defect, environmental and mass torts, as well as securities and consumer class actions. He has also earned a reputation for handling matters with a high emotional content including employment, civil rights, partnership dissolution plus all types of business, insurance and personal injury disputes. One client commented: "Judge Wagner offers a unique combination of federal bench and private practice experience. With this experience and his calm and even-handed disposition he earned everyone's respect." Both plaintiff and defense concur Judge Wagner is knowledgeable, intelligent, creative, perceptive and works relentlessly to resolve disputes. John is a long time Distinguished Fellow with the International Academy of Mediators, and its former President.
Susan White
Special Counsel, Buchalter, Los Angeles, CA
Susan is an experienced commercial litigation attorney with a specialty in insurance recovery. She represents corporate and individual policyholders and has recovered millions in insurance proceeds on their behalf in all types of complex litigation against their insurers. Susan is able to think out of the box, using creative and strategic approaches to both find and maximize insurance coverage for her policyholder clients. Throughout her 30 years of practice, she regularly has represented a wide variety of clients on numerous insurance coverage issues and has resolved complex insurance matters through settlement, arbitration or trial. Susan counsels clients operating in a wide range of industries, including healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, software and Internet technology, financial services, entertainment, and real estate. Acting as insurance coverage counsel, she also represents companies in bankruptcy and advises trustees for bankrupt estates in connection with the recovery of insurance assets for the estate. She also provides risk management guidance to clients to maximize the coverage provided by insurance policies. Additionally, Susan speaks regularly on various insurance coverage issues.
Mark Wooster
Actor, Writer and Producer, former Senior Vice President, Corporate Legal Affairs & Litigation, Universal Pictures, Los Angeles, CA
Mark started his legal career at KattenMuchinRosenman LLP where he represented several television and motion picture studios and industry talent in litigation and transactional entertainment matters. He then went in-house with Universal Pictures where he worked for over ten years, ultimately as Senior Vice President, Corporate Legal Affairs & Litigation, reporting to the General Counsel of Universal Pictures, where he was responsible for all litigation matters affecting Universal Pictures. Today, Mark enjoys pursuing the creative side of entertainment, including writing and production, with occasional forays into stand-up comedy and acting. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.
Mike Young
Judicate West, Los Angeles, CA
Mike, a former employment, intellectual property and business litigator and mediator with the national firm Alston & Bird, has been mediating cases since 1989. Building off of his extensive litigation experience, and his training through the nationally acclaimed Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine Law School, he assists parties resolve contentious and complex civil disputes, often in creative and innovative ways that the parties themselves had not previously considered. He has extensive experience both litigating and mediating all varieties of employment, intellectual property, and business disputes, including class actions and single-plaintiff matters. On the employment side, these have included wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination, disability, public policy, wage and hour, and misclassification disputes, among others. On the IP side, Mike had handled disputes over trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, patents, and restrictive covenants. In addition, in his 25-plus year legal career, he has mediated, litigated, and tried hundreds of disputes involving unfair competition, antitrust, and environmental issues (including CERCLA and RCRA cases), among other complex business disputes. Mike is a long time Distinguished Fellow with the International Academy of Mediators and former President, and was an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law for nearly a decade, and at the Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution at the Pepperdine Law School, teaching mediation and ADR.