David J. Bradford '76 Inducted As Fellow of American College of Trial Lawyers

Jenner & Block Partner David J. Bradford, '76, was elected a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, widely considered to be the premier professional trial organization in America. He was inducted in a ceremony during the ACTL’s recent Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Founded in 1950, the College is “composed of the best of the trial bar from the United States and Canada.” According to the College’s website, “Fellowship is extended only by invitation, after careful investigation, to those experienced trial lawyers who have mastered the art of advocacy and whose professional careers have been marked by the highest standards of ethical conduct, professionalism, civility and collegiality.” Membership is limited to one percent of the total lawyer population of any state or province.

Mr. Bradford is Co-Chair of the Firm’s national Litigation Department. He has served as lead trial counsel in a wide variety of lawsuits and arbitration proceedings in more than a dozen states, including many involving complex commercial and financial transactions and novel constitutional and legal issues. He has served as lead trial counsel for a number of Fortune 500 companies, leading law firms, financial institutions, officers and directors and individual entrepreneurs. Mr. Bradford has also successfully litigated pro bono death penalty cases in trial, post-conviction, and federal habeas corpus proceedings.

In 2009, Mr. Bradford was recognized by the National Law Journal as one of 12 “winning” litigators nationwide who exemplify “the qualities that make a great trial attorney,” for his work as lead trial counsel, in a successful federal Takings Clause challenge in federal court to the constitutionality of regulations in California. The verdict restored over $100 million of lost value to the Firm's client, a New York Stock Exchange REIT.

Among his other recent successes, in late 2009, Mr. Bradford led a Jenner & Block team in securing a $101.6 million verdict for the Firm’s client Ventas, an S&P 500 company that is a leading health care real estate investment trust, after a three-week trial involving claims of tortious interference with business expectation in the context of a sale of public company. The National Law Journal ranked the verdict seventeenth on its list of top 100 verdicts of 2009 and the largest verdict in a case of tortious interference.

From 1984 to 1994, Mr. Bradford withdrew as a partner of the Firm to act as special counsel to the late J. Roderick MacArthur in connection with litigation concerning the divestiture of assets of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. During that time, he served as founding attorney of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit public interest law firm, at Northwestern University School of Law. He remains general counsel to the Center.