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Litigation is storytelling. A successful litigator needs not only the ability to understand a client's story but the skill to relate that story in a straightforward and compelling fashion.
John A. Pearce is a shareholder in Jones Waldo’s Litigation Department. John’s practice focuses on commercial litigation and spans a variety of practice areas. He has litigated cases involving complex factual and legal matters including securities fraud, antitrust, trade secret misappropriation and covenants not to compete. John’s career highlights include:
working on the team that briefed the appeal of In re Silicon Graphics, Inc. before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The published result, which discusses the standard for pleading securities fraud under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, can be found at 183 F.3d 970 (9th Cir. 1999);
working on the team that obtained an injunction allowing the Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Company to retain operational control of The Salt Lake Tribune for the duration of its contract during its dispute with MediaNews Group, Inc. and the Deseret News; and
working on the team that challenged portions of the Utah Election Code and placed the Radioactive Waste Restrictions Act on the ballot. The Utah Supreme Court’s decision striking down unconstitutional portions of the initiative enabling act can be found at Gallivan v. Walker, 54 P.3d 1069 (Utah 2002).
John was born and raised in his father’s hometown of Magna, Utah with frequent and extended trips to his mother’s hometown of Birtley in the North of England. In fact, John developed his lasting distaste of neckties, polyester pants and the arbitrary assertion of authority while attending the Lord Lawson school in Birtley.
John graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah in the dismal science of economics and received his Juris Doctorate from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to joining Jones Waldo, John worked for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in its Palo Alto, California office. Between 1990 and 1992, John took a break from his studies to serve an LDS mission in Santiago, Chile and is currently fighting a battle not to lose his Spanish fluency.
John is a member of the California and Utah Bar Associations and serves on the Executive Committee of the Salt Lake County Bar Association. He has been listed in Utah Business Magazine's Legal Elite in 2006-2008. When John is not working, he is spending time with his wife and two boys. In the rare moments when he is neither working nor playing with his kids, John enjoys reading and recommends Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Martin Amis and Saul Bellow to anyone who will listen. | 