Matt Ostman

San Diego Magazine has once again recognized Frank J. Johnson as one of the few Top Lawyers in San Diego practicing Business Litigation. In selecting who to include in the group of Top Lawyers in San Diego, the publication “invited Martindale-Hubbell®, the company that has long set the standard for peer review ratings with more…

San Diego Magazine has once again recognized Frank J. Johnson as one of the few Top Lawyers in San Diego practicing Complex Litigation. In selecting who to include in the group of Top Lawyers in San Diego, the publication “invited Martindale-Hubbell®, the company that has long set the standard for peer review ratings with more…

Johnson Fistel is pleased to announce that Ralph M. Stone has joined the firm in its New York office.  “We are delighted that Ralph has accepted our offer to join the team,” said Frank J. Johnson, one of the firm’s founding partners.  “He has nearly three decades of significant complex litigation experience which will help…

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) authority to obtain disgorgement.  The case is titled Charles C. Liu, et al. v. Securities and Exchange Commission, CN 18-1501 (“Liu”).  The issue is whether the SEC may seek and obtain disgorgement from a court as “equitable relief” for a securities…

In what have been called ‘landmark’ lawsuits, the Attorneys General for Washington D.C. and Nebraska have filed separate but similar lawsuits this summer against Marriott and Hilton (respectively), accusing the hotel giants of deceptive advertising and use of ‘drip pricing’ to squeeze even more money from American consumers. The suits follow an investigation of hotel…

In 2017, Johnson Fistel was retained to help several firefighters employed by the City of Roswell secure the employment benefits to which they were entitled. These firefighters were working full-time hours, but the City had been misclassifying them as “part-time” so as to deprive them of “full-time” benefits. After meeting with the firefighters, analyzing the…

Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued new guidance on proxy voting which has been characterized as an attempt to hold proxy advisors more accountable to public company stockholders. Proxy advisors, such as Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co., advise stockholders on how to vote in corporate elections and key topics…

1. Where were you born and what makes that city special? I was born in McDonough, Georgia, which is just south of Atlanta, Georgia. McDonough is a special place because it is a smaller town, but yet, it is still within reach of a large city. With that, I was able to enjoy the conveniences…

A data breach to Capital One servers in March 2019 exposed the personal information of nearly 106 million of the bank’s customers and applicants. In March 2019, Paige Thompson, a hacker and a former employee of Amazon’s cloud-computing division, gained access to personal information related to credit card applications from 2005 to early 2019 for…