Robins Kaplan LLP® Announces Partners and Principals

MINNEAPOLIS--()--Robins Kaplan LLP® is proud to announce that Jonathan Mutch, Denise Rahne, Jenny Robbins, and Sam Walling have been named partners. The firm’s Executive Board has also elected Katherine Barrett Wiik, Melissa D’Alelio, Matthew Frerichs, William Reiss, and Patrick Stoneking as principals.

Partners:

Jonathan Mutch has more than 15 years of experience advising and representing insurers in complex claims, large losses, and business disputes with an emphasis on first-party coverage matters, professional responsibility claims, and fraud investigations.

Denise Rahne’s practice involves a diverse range of matters, including fiduciary litigation, estates and trusts litigation, intellectual property litigation, and internal investigations.

Jenny Robbins represents Fortune 500 companies and individuals alike in a myriad of high-profile and private matters, sometimes as plaintiff and sometimes as defendant, in areas such as complex class action, antitrust, and other commercial litigation, white-collar criminal charges, government investigations, and allegations of attorney malpractice and professional misconduct.

Sam Walling focuses on providing timely, reliable, and commercially sensible representation to a mix of individuals, start-ups, and Fortune 100 companies in multi-million-dollar technology and financial litigation matters—areas where he has obtained successful results on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants.

Principals:

Katherine (Katie) Barrett Wiik is active in Robins Kaplan’s Business Litigation and Appellate Advocacy & Guidance Groups. She has authored dozens of appellate briefs to state and federal appeals courts, and the Board of Immigration Appeals, and has argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Minnesota Court of Appeals. In addition to her appellate practice, she has handled diverse litigation matters, including financial litigation cases, breach of contract and employment disputes, and unfair competition and business practices claims. Ms. Barrett Wiik also has a deep commitment to pro bono service and recently achieved a landmark ruling that the Affordable Healthcare Act protects transgender people from discrimination in accessing healthcare (Jakob T. Rumble v. Fairview Health Services and Emergency Physicians, P.A.).

Melissa D’Alelio counsels clients in cases involving a wide variety of insurance lines, including commercial property and liability policies, and represents them in litigation and trial. She has extensive experience defending litigation over collapse, design defect, earth movement, environmental exposure, and catastrophe claims such as tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, fires, and windstorms, and has also represented the firm’s insurer clients in assessing their duty to defend and indemnify their insureds based on the terms of their liability policies. Most recently, Ms. D’Alelio successfully defended Westport Insurance Corporation against a bad faith claim related to storm surge damage from Superstorm Sandy in which the New York Supreme Court, First Appellate Division, affirmed a lower court’s prior two dismissals of the bad faith count. Ms. D’Alelio serves as Vice Chair of the ABA Property Insurance Law Committee, a position she has held for the past five years.

Matthew Frerichs specializes in estate planning and trust and estate administration. He represents individuals and business owners in all aspects of estate planning and business succession, striving to provide clients with peace of mind and reassurance that their legacy is in the best of hands. He also represents individuals and corporate fiduciaries in estate and trust administration proceedings and closely collaborates with the firm’s litigation team when a problem involving an estate or a fiduciary obligation becomes litigious.

William Reiss has more than a decade of experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants in high-profile antitrust litigation. His practice is focused on complex antitrust and commodity futures class actions, and he has particular experience prosecuting antitrust violations in the automotive, marine products, and financial services industries, and representing clients in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently, Mr. Reiss serves as co-lead counsel on behalf of a class of consumers and businesses who purchased automobiles for end use in In re Automotive Parts Antitrust Litigation, which stems from the largest-ever criminal investigation by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. Mr. Reiss also serves as co-lead counsel on behalf of a class of consumers who purchased disposable contact lenses in In re Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation.

Patrick Stoneking is a personal injury and medical malpractice attorney who represents, counsels, and fights for individuals who experience life-altering tragedy and debilitating setbacks due to poor and unsafe decisions of others. Over the past few years, Mr. Stoneking has had significant success in cases arising out of particularly complicated medical injuries, including cauda equina syndrome, failed diagnoses of deadly disease, and improper methadone treatment.

About Robins Kaplan LLP®

Robins Kaplan is among the nation’s premier trial law firms, with more than 220 lawyers located in Atlanta; Bismarck, N.D.; Boston; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Mountain View, Calif.; New York; Naples, Fla.; and Sioux Falls, S.D. The firm litigates, mediates, and arbitrates high-stakes, complex disputes, repeatedly earning national recognition. Firm clients include—as both plaintiffs and defendants—numerous Fortune 500 corporations, emerging-markets companies, entrepreneurs, and individuals.

Contacts

on behalf of Robins Kaplan LLP
Jessica Klein, 646-780-8828
jklein@hellermanbaretz.com

Contacts

on behalf of Robins Kaplan LLP
Jessica Klein, 646-780-8828
jklein@hellermanbaretz.com