McKENNON LAW GROUP PC.

Insurance Bad Faith, ERISA and Business Litigation Attorneys

McKennon Law Group PC has offices throughout California, and handles cases all over the State, including the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco and the Central Valley.

When you need an attorney, choosing the right law firm is the most important decision you will make. We founded McKennon Law Group PC for one purpose: to provide our clients targeted, effective representation geared to get the best possible results. Our single-minded focus is to achieve our clients’ objectives in an aggressive yet professional manner.

We are counted among California’s leading insurance, ERISA, business, and consumer attorneys. We have arbitrated, tried, appealed, and resolved hundreds of disputes on all lines of insurance - life, health, disability, property/casualty, commercial general liability, professional liability, officers and directors liability, employment practices liability, homeowners and business owners property and liability. We have also litigated disputes involving insurance and real estate agent/broker liability, class actions, serious injury and wrongful death, and other consumer and general business matters, and we have recovered millions of dollars in judgments and settlements for our clients.

Office

20321 SW Birch St., Suite 200
Newport Beach, CA 92660

Court weighs securities fraud class-action cases

The Supreme Court is considering whether to abandon a quarter-century of precedent and make it tougher for investors to band together to sue corporations for securities fraud.

The justices hear arguments Wednesday in an appeal by Halliburton Co. that seeks to block a class-action lawsuit claiming the energy services company inflated its stock price.

A group of investors says it lost money when Halliburton's stock price dropped after revelations the company misrepresented revenues, understated its liability in asbestos litigation and overstated the benefits of a merger.

Justices threw out the company's first attempt to block the lawsuit in 2011. But Halliburton is now urging the court to overturn a 25-year-old decision that sparked a tidal wave of securities-related, class-action lawsuits against publicly traded companies and has led to billions in settlements.

The court's 1988 decision in Basic v. Levinson says shareholders who claim they were defrauded by false statements in securities filings don't have to prove they actually relied on the statements. Rather, the court reasoned that any misrepresentation would be reflected in the current stock price. Even if investors are not aware of the misstatements, they are presumed to be aware of them because they affect the stock price.

This presumption, known as the "fraud-on-the-market theory," has become the driving force for modern class-action securities cases. But some economists have questioned whether this theory makes sense anymore, saying it doesn't account for the sometimes random and arbitrary nature of stock trading.

Court upholds $185 million award against Argentina

The Supreme Court has upheld a British natural gas company's multimillion dollar award against the government of Argentina.

BG Group won $185 million through arbitration of a dispute with Argentina over investment in natural gas development. An arbitration tribunal said the company did not have to first submit the dispute to Argentine courts before arbitration could begin.

Argentina asked a U.S. court to throw out the award. The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., sided with Argentina because it found that judges, not arbitrators, should decide where attempts to resolve the dispute should begin.

But the Supreme Court said Wednesday the arbitrators get to make that call and that they were correct to rule in favor of BG Group in this case.

High court sides with parent who fled with child

The Supreme Court has made it harder for a parent in a custody dispute to seek the immediate return of a child under an international treaty to deter child abduction.

The justices ruled unanimously Wednesday that a one-year clock begins ticking when a child is taken out of its country of residence, even if the parent left behind cannot determine where the child is living. In the one-year period, the Hague Convention on child abduction gives judges little option but to return the child to its home country.

After a year, judges have more discretion and must take account of evidence that the child is settled in its new home.

Fla. high court: Immigrant can't get law license

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that immigrants in the country illegally can't be given a license to practice law.

The question was raised when a man who moved here from Mexico when he was 9 years old sought a license in Florida. The court said Thursday that federal law prohibits people who are unlawfully in the country from obtaining professional licenses. The justices said state law can override the federal ban, but Florida has taken no action to do so.

Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court granted a law license to Sergio Garcia, who arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager with his father. But that ruling was only after the state approved a law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain the license.

Two men found guilty for selling U.S. company’s technology

A federal jury found two men guilty Wednesday of economic espionage involving the theft and sale of a U.S. company’s technology to a competitor controlled by the Chinese government.

The jury returned the verdicts against Robert Maegerle and Walter Liew.

They were accused of stealing Delaware-based DuPont Co.’s method for making titanium oxide, a chemical that fetches $17 billion a year in sales worldwide and is used to whiten everything from cars to the middle of Oreo cookies.

A federal jury found two men guilty Wednesday of economic espionage involving the theft and sale of a U.S. company’s technology to a competitor controlled by the Chinese government.

Prosecutors said DuPont was unwilling to sell its method to China, so it was stolen and sent to a company called Pangang Group Co. Ltd., according to testimony during the diplomatically dicey proceedings. The jury heard six weeks of testimony.

Prosecutors alleged that Pangang’s factory is the only facility inside China known to be producing titanium oxide the DuPont way, which uses chlorination.

Court: Broad protection for whistleblowers

The Supreme Court says whistleblower protections in a federal law passed in response to the Enron financial scandal apply broadly to employees of publicly traded companies and contractors hired by the companies.

The justices ruled 6-3 Tuesday in favor of two former employees of companies that administer the Fidelity family of mutual funds. The workers claimed they faced retaliation after they reported allegations of fraud affecting Fidelity funds.

The case involved the reach of a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 in response to the Enron scandal, that protects whistleblower activity. The measure was intended to protect people who expose the kind of corporate misdeeds that arose at Enron.