William E. Thomson is of counsel in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is a member of the firm's Appellate and Constitutional Law, Securities Litigation and Media and Entertainment Practice Groups. Mr. Thomson's practice includes broad experience before both trial and appellate courts, including product liability, mass tort, securities and consumer class actions, derivative cases and internal corporate investigations, and First Amendment litigation.  As an appellate lawyer, Mr. Thomson has argued cases before the California Supreme Court and courts of appeal, as well as the Ninth Circuit.

Mr. Thomson has extensive experience with constitutional challenges to punitive damages, working with companies to develop innovative trial and appellate strategies for avoiding and redressing such awards, including expert witness testimony. He has briefed or argued related motions and appeals in numerous jurisdictions around the country in a wide variety of contexts, including product liability, environmental and mass tort, and insurance defense. Mr. Thomson was part of the team that persuaded the United States Supreme Court to vacate a $290 million punitive damage award against Ford Motor Company, which had been the largest personal injury award ever affirmed in U.S. history. On remand, the California Court of Appeal cut the award by over 90%. He also was a key member of the Ford team in the California Supreme Court in Johnson v. Ford, 35 Cal. 4th 1191 (2005), in which the Court rejected the "aggregate profit disgorgement" theory of punitive damages. He is a key member of the Ford team in Buell-Wilson v. Ford, in which courts slashed the jury award from $368 million to $82 million—including first appellate reduction of non-economic damages in California history—and in which the United States Supreme Court recently granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of Philip Morris v. Williams, 127 S. Ct. 1057 (2007).  Mr. Thomson was also a key member of the team that persuaded the Texas court of appeals to throw out, as a matter of law, the entire $95 million jury verdict in a case involving allegations of fraud. 

In the securities area, Mr. Thomson has had major roles in defending clients in securities class actions, as well as corporate officers and directors in derivative cases. He has defended clients in front of and conducted investigations on behalf of corporate Special Committees. Mr. Thomson also has been principally responsible for several corporate control litigations. Mr. Thomson argued Neubauer v. Goldfarb, 108 Cal. App. 4th 47 (2003), one of the leading cases on the fiduciary duties of officers and directors of California corporations and the public policy restrictions on contractual attempts to limit those duties.

In the First Amendment field, Mr. Thomson has represented media entities seeking access to public records and defended the free speech interests of clients in business and class action litigation. For the Michael Jackson trial, he was a key member of the team representing a consortium of press organizations seeking access to pre-trial and trial documents and proceedings, and briefed and argued a number of motions in both the civil and criminal courts in Santa Maria and Santa Barbara.

Mr. Thomson served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Robert J. Kelleher in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California from 1996 to 1997. He received his law degree in 1996 from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. He earned a Ph.D. degree in 1996 and an M.A. degree in 1987 from the University of Chicago and an A.B. degree in 1985 from Princeton University, all in the field of political science. At the University of Chicago he was a John M. Olin Fellow at the Center For Inquiry Into The Theory And Practice Of Democracy. For his dissertation on the political theory of Alexis de Tocqueville he conducted research in Paris and is fluent in French.

Mr. Thomson is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, California Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States District Courts for the Central, Northern, and Southern Districts of California.

Mr. Thomson is the chairman of the board of the All Saints Children's Center, a non-profit early childhood development center in Pasadena.