Fitzgerald Knaier LLP

Focus and practice areas

Litigation boutiques tend to define themselves by the courtroom, and this one puts trial work at the centre of its San Diego practice. Fitzgerald Knaier LLP takes both sides of a dispute. Its lawyers appear for plaintiffs and for defendants, for companies and for individuals.

The subject matter is broad for a firm of eight lawyers. Business litigation, intellectual property, class actions, employment, personal injury, partnership disputes, securities class actions and toxic tort litigation all appear on the firm's own list of what it does. Real estate litigation, insurance coverage disputes and legal malpractice cases sit alongside them.

Trial is stated as an outcome the firm has reached, in state and federal courts. It also handles arbitrations and other forms of alternative dispute resolution. In my opinion that combination matters more than the length of the practice list, because a firm that has taken verdicts is negotiating from a different position than one that has not.

Where the class action work sits

Several of the lawyers concentrate on group litigation. Securities and shareholder class actions, consumer products class actions, privacy class actions, shareholder derivative actions and consumer class actions are each named by an individual attorney rather than only by the firm.

That is a useful signal for anyone reading a directory listing. Practice areas listed at firm level tell you what work the firm accepts. Practice areas attached to a named lawyer tell you who would actually do it.

How the team is built

The firm lists eight attorneys. Two carry the partner title publicly: Kenneth M. Fitzgerald and Robert G. Knaier, the two names on the door.

Ken Fitzgerald is a trial lawyer whose emphasis falls on complex commercial cases and intellectual property disputes. He came to the firm in 2010 from Latham & Watkins, where he was a partner and tried cases to verdict in state and federal courts.

Bob Knaier works across civil litigation, including trial work, and has acted for plaintiffs and defendants in complex business and commercial cases, mass torts and appellate matters. He clerked for Judge Richard C. Wesley of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit after law school, then practised at Latham & Watkins. He joined the partnership in January 2014.

The wider bench

Keith Cochran handles securities and shareholder class action litigation, whistleblower litigation and complex civil litigation. His stated experience covers pre-trial practice, mediation and trial preparation in state and federal court, with additional work in business litigation, intellectual property, and real estate and partnership matters.

Kyle Hoffman came from the U.S. Attorney's Office, with work spanning the criminal division, the civil division and appeals. Government litigation experience of that kind gives a lawyer procedural fluency in federal court that private practice alone builds more slowly.

Brooke Raunig works in consumer class actions, contract disputes, product liability, unfair competition and patent infringement. Nicholaus Woltering handles complex civil litigation with a securities and class action emphasis. Carly Dunn works on contract, business tort and employment disputes. Brittany Vojak litigates in state and federal court and has handled professional liability and legal malpractice cases.

What the firm's history shows

The firm dates to 2005, when it opened as Chapin Wheeler LLP under San Diego trial lawyers Edward D. Chapin and Joseph "Jay" Wheeler. Fitzgerald arrived five years later. Knaier joined the partnership four years after that, and the name changed to reflect the two of them.

Twenty years of continuous operation under three names is a reasonable marker of stability in a market where boutiques form and dissolve regularly. The lineage is stated openly on the firm's own history page, which is more disclosure than many small firms offer about their origins.

Both named partners came from the same large firm, Latham & Watkins. That shared background tends to shape how a boutique runs a case: large-firm training in document-heavy litigation, applied at a smaller scale with fewer lawyers on the file.

How these matters typically proceed

Readers weighing a firm against their own problem may find some general context useful. What follows describes how these categories of case usually run, not how Fitzgerald Knaier handles any particular one.

Securities and shareholder class actions

These cases begin with a complaint filed on behalf of a proposed class of investors. A lead plaintiff and lead counsel are appointed by the court under a statutory process, and a motion to dismiss usually follows before any discovery starts. Cases that survive that motion move to class certification, then to expert-heavy damages work. Most resolve by settlement subject to court approval.

Toxic tort and exposure claims

Exposure cases turn on causation evidence. Plaintiffs must establish that a substance can cause the injury in question and that it did so in their case, which means medical records, exposure histories and expert testimony carry most of the weight. Timelines are long because the science is contested and the defendants are often numerous.

Partnership and business disputes

Disputes between owners usually start in the governing documents: the partnership agreement, the operating agreement, the shareholder agreement. Valuation is frequently the real fight, and courts often send these matters to mediation before setting trial. Books and records demands can precede a full lawsuit.

What a prospective client can verify

Each of the eight lawyers has an individual email address and a direct line published on the site. That is a small detail with practical value: a caller reaches the lawyer named on the biography rather than a general queue.

The firm discusses fee structures, including contingent and partial contingent arrangements, which suggests it takes work on the plaintiff side where the client cannot fund litigation hourly. Anyone considering the firm should raise that in a first conversation.

As a reviewer, I would note what the site leaves out. Law schools, bar admission years and formal titles for six of the eight lawyers are absent from the biographies. Those are answerable questions in a first call, and the California State Bar's public record covers admission dates independently.

The office is in downtown San Diego, and the firm describes its practice as a San Diego boutique. The two named partners both practised at Latham & Watkins before joining, and the firm has tried cases to verdict in state and federal courts.