Blaine H. Evanson

Blaine H. Evanson is a partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  He practices in the firm’s Appellate and Constitutional Law, Class Actions, and Intellectual Property practice groups, focusing on complex commercial litigation at both the trial and appellate levels.  

Mr. Evanson has represented clients in a wide range of appellate matters, including the areas of class certification, patent law, copyright law, antitrust law, product liability, and constitutional law.  He has briefed appeals in the Supreme Court of the United States and federal and state appellate courts around the country, and has argued appeals in the Ninth Circuit and California’s courts of appeal.  In the trial court, Mr. Evanson has broad commercial litigation experience, and has particular expertise with complex motion practice and providing strategic advice to trial counsel preparing for appeal.

Recent representative matters include:

• Persuading the Supreme Court of the United States to hold ineligible under section 101 a series of patents claiming the abstract idea of escrow implemented on a computer;

• Persuading the Supreme Court to reverse the certification of the largest employment class action in American history;

• Winning reversal by the Federal Circuit of an injunction and contempt sanction against a software company alleged to have infringed a competitor’s patents;

• Persuading the Fifth Circuit to reverse an order denying a motion to compel arbitration and to vacate an order certifying a nationwide ERISA class action;

• Winning reversal by the Federal Circuit in a case involving California's unfair competition law, and in a subsequent appeal obtaining affirmance of summary judgment;

• Obtaining a unanimous reversal from the California Supreme Court enforcing significant constitutional and statutory restrictions on the taxation of intangible assets;

• Persuading the Ninth Circuit to reverse a grant of summary judgment in a complex breach-of-contract dispute;

• Persuading the Tenth Circuit to affirm dismissal of a putative section 11 securities class action;

• Defeating class certification in two putative nationwide class actions against a technology company, based on theories of product defect and breach of warranty; and

• Defeating class certification in a wage-and-hour class action against a health service company, and successfully defending the order on appeal.

Mr. Evanson has been recognized for his appellate practice in The Best Lawyers in America® since 2012, and has been named a “Rising Star” in the area of appellate litigation since 2010 by the Southern California “Superlawyers” edition of Los Angeles magazine.  He was named the 2014 Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year by the Los Angeles chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Society.  And he has taught courses on constitutional law and appellate advocacy at the University of Southern California and Loyola Law Schools, and has lectured and written on a variety of subjects, including class actions, patent law, copyright law, arbitration, punitive damages, appellate procedure, and constitutional law.

Before joining the firm, Mr. Evanson served as a law clerk for Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  He graduated from Columbia Law School in 2006, where he was a James Kent Scholar, a Senior Editor on the Columbia Law Review, and the recipient of the best brief award in Columbia’s Harlan Fiske Stone Moot Court.  Mr. Evanson received his Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems, with University Honors, from Brigham Young University in 2003.

Mr. Evanson is a member of the California bar, admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States; the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, Federal, and D.C. Circuits; and the United States District Courts for the Central and Northern Districts of California.