Nimish R. Desai is a partner specializing in False Claims Act, class action, and environmental torts cases. In his False Claims Act practice, he has represented whistleblower clients in the healthcare, military contracting, mortgage, and securities industries. In addition to managing numerous under seal matters, Nimish has litigated and won notable cases, including obtaining a $46 million false billing case settlement from one of California’s largest hospital systems. Nimish also worked alongside the U.S. Department of Justice to recover $37 million from a military contractor accused of selling defective equipment.
In his class action practice, Nimish is one of the firm’s lead attorneys in the Takata air bag litigation, which has resulted in approved and proposed settlements totaling over $1 billion to date. He helped lead the litigation against BP for its allegedly defective solar panels, which resulted in a nationwide settlement valued at $67 million. Prior to that, he worked on litigation against Toyota for sudden acceleration problems in its vehicles, and against Pfizer for its allegedly defective prescription drugs Bextra and Celebrex. With his chemical engineering background, Mr. Desai also works on the firm’s environmental cases and investigations, including the 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill, currently being litigated in federal court in Los Angeles, and the TVA coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee, which settled in 2014 for nearly $28 million.
Nimish has been named a Super Lawyer each year from 2013-2017 after being selected as a Rising Star in 2012. He previously served on the Board of the East Bay Community Law Center, and the Board of the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California. He is also a member of the State Bar of California, American Bar Association, Bar Association of San Francisco, and Consumer Attorneys of California.
In addition to his degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law), Nimish earned a B.S. with high honors in Chemical Engineering and a B.A. in the Plan II Liberal Arts Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin.
Nimish has published several legal and scientific articles, including “American Chemistry Council v. Johnson: Community Right to Know, But About What?” Ecology Law Quarterly, Winter 2006, and “Analysis of Motor Vehicle Emissions in a Houston Tunnel during Texas Air Quality Study 2000,” Atmospheric Environment, 38, 3363-3372 (2004). He also serves as a contributor to the LexisNexis publication California Class Actions and Coordinated Proceedings.
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