Firm Receives Awards in Two Categories: Class Action and Cybersecurity
CHICAGO – DiCello Levitt has been named 2020 Practice Group of the Year by Law360 for its excellence in two categories: Class Action and Cybersecurity. The awards honor the law firms that have demonstrated general excellence and have worked on landmark matters. The firm received the winning awards from close to 800 submissions across 40 practice areas.
Law360 interviewed co-founding partners, Mark DiCello and Adam Levitt for the Class Action Group of the Year feature. A forthcoming article will be published later this year on the firm’s 2020 Cybersecurity Practice Group of the Year honor.
Not only has DiCello Levitt grown threefold since its 2017 founding, but it has secured more than $2.3 billion in recoveries for its clients in the past twelve months alone. This has included significant settlements against Equifax, Navistar and Takata.
DiCello Levitt focuses on early and aggressive claim identification and analysis, coupled with the firm’s “trial first” framing, which has been shown to regularly result in best-in-class results for their clients. In addition to its other successes, in the past year, the firm obtained a $50 million jury verdict in one of the most significant civil rights cases in U.S. history, Black v. Hicks, No. CV-14-826010 (Ohio C.P., Cuyahoga Cty.)The judgment was affirmed by an Ohio appeals court in August and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to accept jurisdiction of the City’s appeal in November.
Beginning in March 2020, while other firms were scaling back due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mark DiCello, Adam Levitt, and Greg Gutzler collectively rallied the DiCello Levitt team to work to hold companies accountable for COVID-19-related misconduct—a natural outgrowth of the firm’s ongoing effort to protect consumers, businesses, and the public, both in the United States and around the world.
First, realizing the potentially crushing financial consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic would have on American businesses, DiCello Levitt set out to protect those businesses by filing business interruption insurance lawsuits across the United States, demanding that insurance companies honor their contractual obligations to their policyholders and pay out on valid business interruption insurance claims. Because of their recognized track record of proven excellence, the firm and its co-counsel in the business interruption insurance litigation have been retained by some of the largest businesses in the United States, including professional sports teams, real estate developers, and major restaurant chains.
Second, the firm’s lawyers and professional team members also listened to the real financial concerns of student and families, and, after listening, filed the first national litigation to recoup student fees that colleges and universities charged for dormitories and other student activities that were never delivered.
The firm recognizes that its continued growth and achievement requires a concerted team effort and combination of its abilities. Adds New York Managing Partner and Commercial and Whistleblower Litigation Practice Chair Greg Gutzler, “As a relatively young firm, we believe that our approach to developing young lawyers sets us apart. We established the firm with the overarching principle that everyone at DiCello Levitt is a potential team leader, with talents that enable them to lead through adversity and achieve success. We seek lawyers and professional staff with exceptional skills who are interested in the positive impact that their work will have on clients and the community. We like to think our collaborative environment invites an energetic exchange of ideas that accelerates the advancement of dedicated professionals.”
For the full interview with Mark DiCello and Adam Levitt, read here.