David A. DeJute

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David A. DeJute

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Of Counsel
Class Action & Complex Litigation

Los Angeles

Bar & Court Admissions

  • State Bar of California
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
  • U.S. District Court for the Central District of California

Education

  • Harvard Law School, J.D. (cum laude)
  • University of Notre Dame, B.S. (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa)

David A. DeJute is of counsel in M&R’s Los Angeles office. A premier litigator, he joined the firm after 12 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney working in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

While there, David handled a number of trials, including one brought against then-President Barack Obama alleging that, because he was not qualified to serve under the Constitution, he should be removed from office (the so-called “birther” dispute) and another involving the question of whether NASA properly held title to a moon rock. David also tried cases concerning constitutional tort violations, regulatory matters, medical malpractice, complex commercial disputes and fraud.

Before his stint with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, David was a Vice President at Sony Pictures. For nearly a decade, he supervised every aspect of litigation involving the entertainment company worldwide. Many of those disputes related to intellectual property, copyright violations, profit participation and talent agreements.

Along with his work at M&R, David is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University School of Law, where he supervises participants in the school’s Disaster Recovery Clinic that provides pro bono legal representation to individuals impacted by natural disasters. David has also taught Antitrust, Trademark, Trade Secret, Copyright and Entertainment Law to second- and third-year law students, as well as a class in Ethics.

David began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable William J. Rea (deceased), a U.S. District Judge in the Central District of California, and then as an associate at Kaye Scholer (now Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer) and Kinsella, Boesch, Fujikawa & Towle. Prior to that, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating cum laude, and served as Vice President of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, the nation’s oldest.