Major League Baseball hires lead counsel for San Jose litigation

Major League Baseball has hired John W. Keker, a partner in the San Francisco firm Keker & Van Nest LLP, to serve as its lead counsel in the lawsuit filed in federal court by the City of San Jose, California on June 18^th, it was announced today.

Keker specializes in complex antitrust, commercial and intellectual property cases and securities cases. Regarded as one of the country's top trial lawyers, Keker was the lead counsel for the U.S. legal adviser to the group of Ecuadorian citizens who successfully won an $18 billion judgment against a corporation over environmental damage in their country, the largest single pollution judgment ever imposed. Keker recently won a defense verdict for an employee who was targeted in a Securities & Exchange Commission enforcement action in New York. In 1989, Keker was the chief prosecutor in the Iran-Contra trial involving Oliver North. He has represented Google, Standard & Poor's and many corporate executives throughout his four-decade career. 

Keker is an alumnus of Princeton University and Yale Law School. He served as a Marine infantry platoon leader and lieutenant in Vietnam, for which he won a Purple Heart. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the United States. Keker was a co-founder of Keker & Van Nest in 1978.

Mr. Keker will work with the New York office of Proskauer, Baseball's longtime counsel.