Diane Rice |

Bio

Diane Rice is a trial lawyer who has had more than 35 years of complex litigation experience trying cases throughout the United States. Her practice focuses on difficult and high-profile lawsuits, including commercial disputes, intellectual property cases, mass torts and class actions. The skill and insight that she brings to cases is based on her broad experience representing plaintiffs and defendants, individuals and Fortune 500 corporations, as well as startup/emerging tech companies and mature companies. Diane’s clients include technology companies, manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device companies. Product area expertise includes pharmaceuticals, diet drugs, asbestos, and breast implant litigation. She is admitted to practice in California, Flordia and Connecticut.

In 1985, Diane joined the San Francisco law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, where she was a partner from 1991 to 2003. Starting in 2001, she led Brobeck’s Products Liability & Life Sciences Group. Upon the dissolution of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, she joined Hosie Rice LLP. Her court experience includes over one hundred weeks of jury trials in 15 states and she has settled thousands of cases. She most recently was co-lead counsel in a breach of contract and fraud case tried to successful jury verdict in 2017.

Diane has been a member of the national trial team for Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Mentor Corporation. She oversaw a pharmaceutical and device litigation for Novartis and Ciba-Geigy Corporations. She has managed a national experts’ team for American Home Products. For fifteen years, she represented Fibreboard Corporation, Owens Corning Fiberglas, and Pittsburgh Corning Corporation and litigated two of the largest class action trials in the country on their behalf. Diane is a co-lead class action counsel in the In Re Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation, representing freelance authors who had their works published on Internet databases and publications without their permission.

Diane has also litigated several significant pro bono cases. She represented a child who was severely brain damaged as a result of strangulation in a crib and received a $38 million structured settlement during trial. In another pro bono matter, she obtained a significant multimillion dollar cash settlement on behalf of a star athlete teenage boy who suffered permanent brain damage from a tennis racket blow to the head. For her pro bono service, she received one of Brobeck’s highest recognitions, “The Whit Bridge Community Services Award.”

Diane has been a faculty member for trial advocacy programs at Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame and the University of San Francisco law schools, as well as a speaker for California Continuing Education of the Bar courses in Trial Skills, Deposition Skills, and Trial Advocacy. She serves as a visiting faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She is often a featured speaker at industry conferences such as Mealey's and the Defense Research Institute Conference. She is a Northern California Super Lawyer and has an "AV Preeminent" Rating by the Martindale-Hubbell Peer review.

Diane Rice

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