BOTTINI & BOTTINI - Key Persons

Mr. Chang specializes in representing whistleblowers in qui tam cases and shareholders in class actions and derivative litigation. He has substantial experience in handling appeals. Before joining Bottini & Bottini, Inc., Mr. Chang had over ten years of experience in federal litigation. He served as a judicial law clerk to United States District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon for the Northern District of Illinois and to United States District Judge Roger T. Benitez for the Southern District of California. In addition to his judicial clerkships, Mr. Chang litigated complex cases on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants. He prosecuted securities and ERISA class actions on behalf of shareholders. He also defended executives, energy companies, insurers, and trade associations for six years at the New York office of LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae LLP, where he focused on litigating high-stakes cases and conducting corporate internal investigations. A member of the bars of California and New York, Mr. Chang is admitted to practice in numerous federal trial and appellate courts. He is a graduate of Beloit College (B.A. 1997) and Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington (J.D. 2001). He is fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin.

Job Titles:

• Counsel to Bottini & Bottini, Inc

Ms. Beste is of counsel to Bottini & Bottini, Inc. She practices complex civil litigation. She is a 1992 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law. She received her undergraduate degree in 1989 from Boston College, where she was Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in Economics. From 1996 to 2001, Ms. Beste practiced complex civil litigation at Swidler Berlin Shereff Freidman, LLP in Washington, D.C. Her practice included employment litigation, environmental litigation, and trade secret litigation. Ms. Beste is admitted to practice in Califorina, Washington, D.C., Missouri, and Illinois. Ms. Beste's practice at the firm is concentrated on shareholder class actions and shareholder derivative actions.

Mr. Bottini practices in the areas of Securities Class Actions, Mergers & Acquisitions, Antitrust, Consumer Class Actions, Shareholder Derivative Litigation, Privacy Class Actions, and ERISA class action litigation. Prior to forming Bottini & Bottini, Inc., Mr. Bottini was a partner at several firms, including Chapin Fitzgerald & Bottini LLP, Johnson Bottini, LLP, and Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP. Mr. Bottini has achieved numerous multi-million dollar recoveries in securities, consumer, privacy, and antitrust class action cases throughout the country. Mr. Bottini served as an Adjunct Professor of Business Law at the University of San Diego from 1995-97. He is a 1991 graduate of St. Louis University (B.A. magna cum laude), and the University of San Diego School of Law (J.D. cum laude 1994), where he was the Lead Articles Editor of the San Diego Law Review and received the American Jurisprudence Award in Property and the Graduate Tax Award for Excellence in Federal Tax Policy. Mr. Bottini is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, all California courts, the Second, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuit Courts of Appeal, the United States District Court for Colorado, and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He is AV-rated by Martindale-Hubbell. Mr. Bottini practices in the areas of securities litigation (including securities fraud litigation under the PSLRA and Sarbanes-Oxley Act, mergers & acquisitions, and proxy litigation), antitrust, ERISA, consumer, and employment class action litigation. His published cases include Cook v. McCullough et. al., Case. No. 11-cv-9119, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 114621 (N.D. Ill. August 13, 2012) (order denying motion to dismiss in shareholder derivative action brought on behalf of Career Education Corp. against its officers and directors for breach of fiduciary duty); Snellink v. Gulf Resources, Inc., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67839, Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) ¶96,828 (C.D. Cal. May 15, 2012) (denying motion to dismiss in securities fraud class action complaint under the federal securities laws); Smith v. Apollo Group, Inc. et al., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3672 (D. Ariz. Jan. 11, 2012) (denying defendants' motion to stay shareholder derivative case pending completion of an internal investigation by a Special Committee of the Board of Directors and also denying a stay of the case until resolution of a related securities fraud class action case); Ferguson v. Corinthian et al., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1358 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 5, 2012) (denying defendants' motion to stay case pending defendant's appeal of order denying motion to compel arbitration as to Plaintiffs' claims for injunctive relief under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17200 et seq.); Ferguson v. Corinthian Colleges et al., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119261 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 6, 2011) (denying in part a motion to compel arbitration post-Concepcion); Rosendahl v. Bridgepoint Education, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 119735 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 17, 2011) (denying in part motion to dismiss consumer class action complaint alleging fraud and misrepresentation by for-profit college); In re Coventry Healthcare, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34891 (D. Md. Mar. 31, 2011), reh'g denied, Boyd v. Coventry Healthcare, Inc., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 135000 (D. Md. Nov. 18, 2011) (denying motion to dismiss in ERISA class action case); Ferguson v. Corinthian et al., 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45119 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 15, 2011)(denying motion to transfer case to Southern District of Florida); Harrison v. XTO Energy, Inc., 705 F.Supp.2d 572 (N.D. Tx. 2010) (denying defendants' motion to dismiss or stay action under Colorado River abstention doctrine); In re Extreme Networks, Inc. Shareholder Deriv. Litig., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 111445, Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) ¶95,526 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 17, 2009), reconsideration denied, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32685 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 2, 2010) (denying motion to dismiss and upholding shareholder derivative complaint, finding that plaintiff had adequately alleged demand futility under F.R.C.P. 23.1); In re Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. Deriv. Litig., 615 F.Supp.2d 1018 (N.D. Cal. 2009) (denying in part and granting in part motion to dismiss in shareholder derivative action, after Mr. Bottini was retained by the Company's Special Litigation Committee and an amended complaint was filed on behalf of the Company); In Re Dynamic Random Access Memory Antitrust Litig., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 39841 (N.D. Cal. June 5, 2006) (granting motion for class certification in direct purchaser antitrust class action involving DRAM computer memory); Karlin v. Alcatel, 2001 WL 1301216, Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) ¶ 91,526 (C.D. Cal. 2001) (denying defendants' motion for summary judgment); In re Imperial Credit Industries, Inc. Sec. Litig., 2000 WL 1049320, Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) ¶ 91,024 (C.D. Cal. 2000) (denying defendants' motion to dismiss in a securities fraud action under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934); In re USA Talks.com Sec. Litig., 2000 WL 1887516 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 14, 2000) (denying defendants' motion to dismiss in 10b-5 case, in one of the first decisions upholding a 10b-5 complaint after passage of the PSLRA); In re DRAM Antitrust Litig., 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 39841 (N.D. Cal. June 5, 2006) (granting motion for class certification).

Job Titles:

• Counsel
• Vice Chair of the Board of the University of California Press Foundation

Ms. Lerach is Of Counsel at Bottini & Bottini. She is a 1993 graduate of the University of Kentucky School of Law and is admitted to the Kentucky and California bars. Ms. Lerach has dedicated her life to fighting for those without enough voice, from fighting for immigrants' rights as a young law student to serving as partner/Of Counsel to the nation's largest plaintiff's firms, representing shareholders, workers, and consumers in a broad range of complex and class-action litigation for fraudulent business practices, human rights abuses, and labor and employment violations. After graduating from the University of Kentucky College of Law, Ms. Lerach served as law clerk to the Honorable Sara Walter Combs, Kentucky Court of Appeals, and practiced law in Lexington (Newberry, Hargrove & Rambicure, PSC) and Louisville (Greenbaum, Doll & McDonald, LLP) before relocating to California in 1999. In California, she joined Milberg Weiss and was a lead litigator in many cases, including Does I v. The Gap, Inc., Case No. 01-0031 (D.N. Mariana Islands), a case on behalf of approximately 25,000 sweatshop workers against leading clothing manufacturers, which successfully concluded with a $20 million settlement and a precedent-setting Monitoring Program to oversee labor and human rights practices in Saipan's garment factories. During her time at the firm and successor firms, she also worked on cases on behalf of the Sierra Club & the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (cross-border trucking), as well as a number of high-profile securities class actions such as Enron ($7.3 billion recovered) and coordinated private actions like WorldCom. In 2008, she received the Consumer Attorneys of California, Women's Law Caucus Award as Outstanding Consumer Advocate. Ms. Lerach's passion for law intersects with activism both in her pro bono work and in her teaching: she worked as a consultant to the Liberian Ministry of Gender & Development with respect to that country's proposed constitutional revisions, specifically as relates to gender neutrality; an outspoken critic of current GMO labeling policy, she was involved in the 2012 California ballot initiative to label GMOs (Prop 37), organizing university forums and debating opponents of the measure in San Diego, and served on the steering committee of Californians for GE Labeling, which spearheaded the renewed effort to achieve GMO labeling in California in 2016; and she is an advocate for sustainable farm internship programs, and was chosen as one of San Diego Magazine's 50 People to Watch 2011 for this work. Ms. Lerach speaks regularly at a number of institutions, including previous presentations at the Buchmann Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University (regarding the recently adopted Israeli class-action statute), Cornell University Law School (Joint JD/MBA Program), the University of Kentucky College of Law (Randall-Park Colloquium), and most recently the University of San Diego, moderating panels on Ethical Eating and Water Matters (in conjunction with the Changemaker Challenge) and the Future Thought Leaders series on behalf of the Berry Good Food Foundation on UCTV, for which she has received four San Diego Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. She was the author of "Improving Corporate Governance Through Litigation Settlements," Corporate Governance Review. Ms. Lerach serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of the University of California Press Foundation, focused on progressive scholarship; a member of the Advisory Board of the Women Peacemakers Program at the Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego; an Advisor to Kiss the Ground, devoted to promoting regenerative agriculture, connecting sustainable agricultural practices to the larger issue of climate change, and Executive Producer to a documentary film of the same name slated for release 1/18; and Founder/President of the Berry Good Food Foundation. Ms. Lerach is currently serving as one of the lead counsel in Mayberry et al., Derivatively as members and Beneficiaries of Trust Funds on behalf of the Kentucky Retirement Systems v. Aldridge et al, CASE No. 2019-CA-000043-OA (Circuit Court, Franklin, Kentucky), a derivative action seeking to recover billions of dollars in losses sustained by the Kentucky Retirement System due to wrongdoing committed by KKR, Blackstone, and various individual defendants.

Nina M. Bottini is a 2001 graduate of Heinrich-Heine-University School of Law, Dusseldorf, Germany, and received an LL.M. degree (Masters in Comparative Law) from California Western School of Law in 2006. Ms. Bottini specializes in securities class action litigation, ERISA class action litigation, antitrust, securities, and shareholder derivative actions. Her representative cases include In re DRAM Antitrust Litig., MDL No. 1486 (United States District Court for the Northern District of California) and In re Brocade Communications, Systems, Inc. Derivative Litig., Case No. 1:05cv41683 (Superior Court for the State of California, County of Santa Clara).

Mr. Kolesnikov practices complex civil litigation in state and federal courts across the country, focusing on securities class actions, consumer class actions, and shareholder derivative actions. He has been the principal brief writer in more than 30 appeals, including before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, California Supreme Court, Delaware Supreme Court, and Missouri Supreme Court, has assisted on briefs before the Supreme Court of the United States, and has argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (including en banc), Delaware Supreme Court, and multiple state intermediate appellate courts. Mr. Kolesnikov's notable published appellate decisions in argued cases include: • Bottini v. City of San Diego, 27 Cal. App. 5th 281 (2018) (4th Dist.) (affirming grant of writ of mandamus to set aside City Council's resolution in a CEQA appeal; holding, for the first time in a published decision, that Landgate's "substantially