Katherine L.I. Hacker

Kat Hacker has been recognized as one of the top 100 trial lawyers in America based on her significant experience in high-stakes cases in state and federal court. Kat has spent close to 150 days in trial, including trials followed closely by news outlets around the world. Kat has delivered opening statements including one with billions of dollars at stake, cross-examined witnesses including one that led to a New York Times headline-grabbing mid-trial discovery, and argued motions and appeals across the country including recently in the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Based on this experience, Law360 tapped Kat as one of only five trial attorneys in the country in their Rising Stars of 2023. Kat has also earned a spot in Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Litigators in America and been recognized by Benchmark Litigation as a Future Star multiple times.

Most recently, Kat led a trial team as first chair to a full defense verdict in a case alleging that Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma. That verdict ranked as one of the top ten most impressive defense verdicts of 2023. Kat has also handled a number of intellectual property cases. For example, Kat second-chaired a patent trial for Amazon about whether Amazon should be liable for patent infringement when third-party sellers offer and sell infringing products on Amazon.com. The jury returned a complete defense verdict that was upheld on appeal. Kat also served as co-lead counsel for Wowza Media Systems in a patent infringement case about video compression. The plaintiff tried to get more than two dozen cases consolidated into multidistrict litigation. Despite Wowza's small size compared to other defendants like Google, Apple, and Netflix, the defendants entrusted the argument in front of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to Wowza's team. After a victory where the Panel refused to consolidate the cases, Wowza settled, escaping the case within just five months of it being filed.

Cases Tried or Otherwise Taken to Judgment

Gordon v. The Monsanto Company (St. Louis Cty.)
Lead trial counsel for Monsanto in products liability case claiming that the herbicide Roundup caused Plaintiff’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Plaintiff asserted claims for strict liability design defect, strict liability failure to warn, and negligence. In addition, Plaintiff was represented by one of the attorneys who had previously secured an $80 million verdict in one of the first three Roundup cases to be tried. After a six-week trial, the jury found in favor of Monsanto on all three claims and did not award any damages.

Click here for Law360 article about the win.

Click here for a list of additional news coverage.

In re National Prescription Opiate Litigation (N.D. Ohio)
Trial counsel for Walgreens in remedies phase of nuisance case relating to the distribution and sale of prescription opioid medications. For press coverage of Kat’s opening statement, click here.

Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (D. Mass.)
Trial counsel in three-week race discrimination case against Harvard for its admissions practices that discriminate against Asian-American applicants. For press coverage on a cross-examination that led to mid-trial discovery of damaging documents from Harvard, click here. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Texas Roadhouse (D. Mass.)
Trial counsel for landmark pattern or practice age discrimination claim brought by EEOC against national restaurant chain. After three-week jury trial in January 2017, case ended in a mistrial because jury was deadlocked after deliberating for one week. Law360 coverage here. Case settled very favorably before retrial.

Confidential Arbitration (AAA)
Trial counsel for oil and gas exploration and production company in commercial and state securities law dispute. Claimant sought more than $25 million. After a two-week arbitration hearing, the arbitration issued a favorable decision on every claim and ordered the claimant to pay our client's attorneys' fees.

Milo & Gabby, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. (W.D. Wash. and Fed. Cir.)
Trial and appellate counsel for Amazon.com in a patent infringement suit. Secured complete defense verdict for Amazon in a jury trial concerning whether Amazon is liable for patent infringement when third-party sellers offer and sell infringing products on Amazon.com. Milo and Gabby appealed both the jury's verdict on patent infringement and the judge's summary judgment decision on copyright infringement. The Federal Circuit affirmed the case in its entirety.

Click here for Law360 article.

Click here for Geekwire article.

Click here for the jury's verdict.

Core-Mark International, Inc. et al. v. Sonitrol Corp. (Colo. Dist. Ct. and Colo. Ct. App.)
Trial and appellate counsel for Sonitrol, former subsidiary of Tyco International, in one-week damages-only retrial. Before Bartlit Beck got involved, a previous jury found Sonitrol willfully and wantonly breached its burglar-alarm monitoring contract with Core-Mark. Sonitrol's breach stemmed from its failure to detect three burglars in Core-Mark's warehouse, which allowed the burglars to loot the warehouse for three hours. Eventually, one of the burglars lit two fires that burned for five days and destroyed the entire warehouse. Core-Mark claimed damages for both the theft and arson, which totaled over $23 million in damages and climbed to over $50 million with pre-judgment interest. Despite the fact that the jury in the previous trial had given Core-Mark all the damages they asked for and despite the fact that the court precluded Sonitrol from calling a damages expert, the jury in the retrial awarded Core-Mark only $2.75 million in theft-related damages, the damages number Sonitrol sponsored. The jury awarded no fire-related damages. The Colorado Court of Appeal affirmed the jury's verdict.

Current Representations

Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Cases 
Lead national counsel for DuPont on claims that its 2015 spin-off of The Chemours Company was a fraudulent transfer. Handling those claims in the aqueous film-forming foam multidistrict litigation in the District of South Carolina as well as cases in California, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Vermont. Click here to watch Kat argue a personal jurisdiction appeal in one of these cases in the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

Zentian, Ltd. v. Apple, Inc.; Zentian, Ltd. v. Amazon.com, Inc. (W.D. Tex.)
Trial counsel for Zentian in patent infringement actions regarding hardware speech recognition systems and architecture developed in the early 2000s. These technologies facilitate on-device speech recognition functions, including the “always on” wake word/phrase, dictation of text messages and notes, and/or speech recognition for Alexa and/or Siri user requests.

Elm 3DS Innovations, LLC v. Micron Technology, Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., SK hynix Inc. (D. Del.)
Trial counsel for Elm 3DS in a patent infringement case about three-dimensional integrated circuits.

Other Representative Cases

Realtime Adaptive Streaming LLC v. Wowza Media Systems, LLC (D. Colo.)
Co-lead counsel for Wowza in a patent infringement case about the use of the H.264 video compression standard. Plaintiff filed dozens of cases across the country and tried to get them consolidated into multidistrict litigation. We defeated that motion, and the case settled favorably shortly afterwards.

Click here for the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation's order.

Device Enhancement LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. (D. Del.)
Lead trial counsel for Amazon in a patent infringement suit about Amazon's Silk web browser. Won motion to dismiss challenging the patent as invalid for claiming an abstract idea under Section 101 and Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International.

Click here for the district court's motion to dismiss ruling.

SushiQuik, LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc. (D. Colo.)
Lead trial counsel for Amazon in a trademark infringement case about sushi-rolling kits sold on Amazon.com. Secured voluntary dismissal before discovery even started.

ContentGuard Holdings, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. et al. (E.D. Tex.)
Trial counsel for Amazon.com in a patent infringement suit about Amazon's use of digital rights management technology for eBooks sold through the Kindle app, movies sold through the Amazon Instant Video app, and music sold through the Amazon Music app. Case settled favorably shortly before trial.

Washington v. Trinity Industries, Inc. & Trinity Highway Products, LLC (M.D. N.C.)
Defended Trinity in action alleging personal injuries from Trinity's ET-Plus guardrail end terminal system. Case settled favorably shortly before trial.

U.S. Airways v. Sabre Holdings Corp. et al. (S.D.N.Y.)
Trial counsel for Sabre in antitrust action relating to the display of U.S. Airways' fares in Sabre's Global Distribution System.

Align Technology, Inc. v. 3Shape A/S and 3Shape Inc. (D. Del.)
Trial counsel for plaintiff Align Technology (maker of the popular Invisalign system) in action alleging 3Shape’s infringement of certain Align patents that claim technology for monitoring patient progress and converting three-dimensional digital models of teeth into physical models. 

Santa Clara County et al. v. NL Industries, Inc. (Santa Clara Super. Ct.)
Trial counsel for NL Industries in a public nuisance action related to lead-based paint brought by a number of California municipalities.

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ADT Holdings, Inc., ADT Security Services, Inc., and Automated Security Corp. v. National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, PA (10th Cir.)
Appellate counsel for Tyco International Ltd.'s ADT subsidiaries in an insurance coverage action related to the warehouse fire trial, Core-Mark International, Inc. et al. v. Sonitrol Corp. Case was jointly dismissed as coverage issues did not need to be decided based on the favorable result in Core-Mark.

Good Shepherd Hospital v. CompleteRx, Ltd. (Tex. App.)
Trial and appellate counsel at former firm for CompleteRx, Ltd., a pharmacy management company, in a breach of contract dispute with an ex-client hospital. Briefed, argued, and won writ of mandamus from a Texas state court of appeals requiring the trial court to allow CompleteRx to use the Texas offer of settlement statute.

Click here for the mandamus ruling

Medivation, Inc. v. Regents of the University of California and Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (San Francisco Super. Ct.)
Trial counsel at former firm for Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in a breach of contract case concerning the right to develop certain chemical compounds for the treatment of prostate cancer. Won summary judgment granting Aragon the exclusive right to develop a promising prostate cancer treatment valued at over $200 million and rejecting all of the plaintiff's claims for damages. The case was upheld by the California Court of Appeal.

Click here for the summary judgment rulings