Scott A. Edelman is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Century City office. Mr. Edelman is a member of the firm’s Litigation Department and a Co-Chair of its Media, Entertainment and Technology Practice Group and the Transnational Litigation and Foreign Judgments Practice Group. Mr. Edelman has first-chaired numerous jury trials, bench trials and arbitrations, and has a broad background in commercial litigation, including antitrust, employment, and product liability. He also is the firm’s National Pro Bono Coordinator.
Mr. Edelman has received numerous accolades. In 2010 he received a Clay Award as “Lawyer of the Year” from California Lawyer and was recognized as an “Attorney of the Year” by The Recorder. He was named in 2009 and 2010 as one of the Daily Journal’s Top 100 Lawyers in California and named the 2009 “Litigator of the Year” by the Century City Bar Association. Mr. Edelman was one of 10 litigators named in the Los Angeles Business Journal’s 2009 Top 100 Lawyers in Los Angeles, “Best of the Bar” and one of the “Best Lawyers In America” by American Lawyer Media.
Mr. Edelman was profiled in “Schmoozing His Way to Century City,” SuperLawyers (February 2010), which selected him as one of the top ten lawyers in Southern California. Mr. Edelman has also been ranked in numerous legal industry publications. He has been repeatedly named by Chambers USA as a Leading Media and Entertainment Litigation Lawyer in California; by the Hollywood Reporter as one of the top 100 “Power Lawyers”; by Daily Variety’s as one of Hollywood’s top litigators, and by The Best Lawyers in America® in the category of Entertainment Law: Motion Pictures & Television. He was also named a California “local litigation star” in Media and Entertainment Litigation in the 2012 and 2013 editions of Benchmark Litigation.
Mr. Edelman has substantial experience trying high stake fraud cases, including representing the plaintiff in obtaining a $122 million dollar federal jury verdict in Intertainment v. Franchise Pictures and achieving the dismissal of two toxic torts cases against Dole Foods because of fraud on the court by plaintiffs and their counsel. The Dole victory was featured as the cover story of the October issues of California Lawyer and Corporate Counsel, and received widespread newspaper coverage, including a front-page feature story in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Edelman and his practice group’s work for Dole and Chevron also were prominently mentioned in: “Litigation Department of the Year,” The American Lawyer (January 2010/2012); and “The Kill Step,” The American Lawyer/Corporate Counsel (October 2009). Mr. Edelman has also represented Chevron in high-stakes proceedings stemming from the oil operations of Chevron’s subsidiary, Texaco, in Ecuador.
Mr. Edelman represents several Fortune 500 companies and a major university in connection with their intellectual property issues. His cases in the area of entertainment and intellectual property have covered a broad range of areas, including profit participation in the motion picture and television industries, arbitrations under the auspices of the Independent Film & Television Alliance, right of publicity, copyright and trademark infringement, misappropriation of ideas, sports law, false advertising, royalty disputes involving patented medical devices, and negligence in the selection of computer hardware and software. He authors a chapter on copyright damages in Intellectual Property Law, Damages and Remedies (Law Journal Press 2000). His entertainment clients include major motion picture and television studios, television networks, music companies, motion picture foreign distributors and investors, production companies, licensing agents and management companies.
Mr. Edelman received his law degree from the University of California (Boalt Hall) in 1984, where he was Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Ecology Law Quarterly. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Stanford University in 1981, where he graduated with distinction. Prior to joining Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Mr. Edelman clerked for United States District Court Judge Jesse W. Curtis in the Central District of California.
Mr. Edelman recently completed his term as Chairman of the Board of Directors of KCET Public. He is a member of the Board of Directors and past president of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, a legal aid organization for the indigent, and also serves on the Board of Directors of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.
A list of Mr. Edelman’s cases is available on request.