John R. McCambridge

John McCambridge has extensive experience litigating complex commercial matters at trial and on appeal in state and federal courts throughout the U.S. The substantive areas of his cases include antitrust; securities fraud; patent, trademark and copyright infringement; legal and accounting malpractice; misappropriation; unfair competition; theft of trade secrets; breach of contract; and civil fraud. Mr. McCambridge also has substantial experience in professional sports, including collective bargaining and both salary and grievance arbitrations.

Examples of notable matters handled by Mr. McCambridge include the following:

• He obtained judgments for a trustee in bankruptcy and a class of noteholders in accounting malpractice, securities fraud and RICO litigation encompassing a lengthy jury trial in federal court, multiple appeals and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions ((see Reves v. Ernst & Young, 494 U.S. 56 (argued) (establishing the test for determining whether a note is a security), Reves v. Ernst & Young, 507 U.S. 170 (interpreting the “conduct” requirement of RICO) and multiple other opinions, including those captioned as Robertson v. White)).
• He secured injunctions for WGN Continental Broadcasting, a unit of Tribune Company, in extensive antitrust litigation (including a bench trial and several appeals) attacking efforts by the NBA to prevent superstation WGN from telecasting games of the Chicago Bulls (see Chicago Professional Sports, Ltd. and WGN Cont’l Broadcasting v. NBA (multiple opinions)).
• After a lengthy jury trial in federal court, he obtained a $36 million verdict (with $27 million in punitive damages) against the plaintiffs' class action firm Ness Motley (a predecessor firm to Motley Rice) (see Interclaim Holdings Ltd. v. Ness Motley, et al., 298 F. Supp. 2d 746 (2004), and multiple other opinions).
• He represented the Chicago Cubs in federal court litigation, successfully bringing claims for misappropriation and copyright infringement against the rooftop owners around Wrigley Field and securing pretrial settlements obligating the rooftops to pay the Cubs a 17% royalty on their gross revenues (Chicago National League Ball Club, Inc. v. Sky Box on Waveland, et al.).
• He represented the National Hockey League Players’ Association in collective bargaining (including the 1992 in-season strike and the protracted lockouts of 1994-95 and 2004-05), negotiating collective bargaining agreements that have taken the average annual player salary in the NHL from $212,000 per season to more than $1.8 million; he negotiated agreements covering the participation in the Winter Olympics of NHL Players from eight nations; he handled dozens of grievance and salary arbitrations for the NHLPA; and he represented the NHLPA in commercial litigation involving antitrust, rights of publicity, breach of contract, and trademark issues (see, e.g. NHLPA v. Plymouth Whalers Hockey Club (E.D. Mich.), Dumas v. Major League Baseball Properties, et al. (S.D. Cal.), CQL Original Products, Inc. v. NHLPA (Calif. state court), Licensing Corp. of America v. NHLPA (bench trial in NY state court).

Mr. McCambridge is a founding principal of the firm, a member of its Executive Committee and former Managing Principal.