Position: Partner

TEL: 213-417-5100

FAX: 213-488-1178

Email: Click Here

Website: www.mpplaw.com

Admitted:  1988, Massachusetts; 1990, California; U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit; U.S. District Court, Central, Northern and Southern Districts of California; U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts

Law School: University of San Francisco School of Law, J.D., 1988

College: Harvard College, A.B., 1984

Birth Date and Place: 

Practice Areas: Complex civil litigation in the areas of class actions (both plaintiff and defense), insurance coverage, real estate and professional liability.

Additional Information: AV rated by Martindale Hubbell, Mr. Vendler practices complex litigation in the areas of class actions (both plaintiff and defense), insurance coverage, real estate and professional liability. Most recently, Mr. Vendler has been lead class counsel in nationally publicized class actions against the credit counseling industry, including the $35 million dollar class settlement reached in 2006 against the founder of Ameridebt. Selected press clippings about the case can be read by clicking here (Washington Post) and here (Baltimore Sun). In a parallel credit counseling case (against the industry giant Cambridge Credit Counseling, Inc. and its founders, John and Richard Puccio), Mr. Vendler obtained a plaintiffs' judgment of over $250,000,000 in 2008 and broke new legal ground in 2005 when he successfully argued before the First Circuit Court of Appeals that even though the federal Credit Repair Organizations Act ("CROA") contains an exemption for non profit tax exempt organizations, the federal courts should not bound by the IRS's determination of tax exempt status in determining whether an entity qualifies for the exemption. Instead, Mr. Vendler argued that in weighing entitlement to the exemption, federal courts should look to the nature of the entity's actual operations and not merely its legal form. The First Circuit's published opinion agreeing with the plaintiffs' position and reversing the district court's dismissal order can be seen by clicking here. Other class action cases that Mr. Vendler has successfully championed to multi-million dollar settlements include claims against all of the nation's leading rental car companies (Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, etc.) for violating California statutes relating to the sale of collision damage waivers and a claim against a nationally known health club chain for overcharging the public. Mr. Vendler is also lead counsel currently representing a major pharmaceutical company in three class action cases arising from allegedly misleading statements made on the labeling of a contact lens solution product. But Mr. Vendler's extensive class action experience is not limited to solely representing plaintiffs. Mr. Vendler has also successfully defended a number of class action cases, many of them all the way to an outright defense judgment. These have included: a claim for false advertising, violations of California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act and California's Unfair Competition Law against a distributor of the steroid precursor Androstenediol (made infamous by the baseball player Mark McGwire) (defense judgment); a claim for property damage to an entire neighborhood as a result of an electrical power surge (defense judgment); a claim against a leading insurer for statutory violations in the sales of self-storage insurance policies (defense judgment by terminating sanction); and a claim against a distributor of an "all natural" nutritional supplement that was allegedly contaminated with prescription medications (claim voluntarily dismissed after dispositive motion filed). In the same case, Mr. Vendler defeated class certification as to the second distributor represented by MPP. Other class and representative claims that Mr. Vendler has handled from both the plaintiff and defense side have involved wage and hour violations, gender discrimination by one of the nation's top ten employers (See Balandran v. Labor Ready, Inc., 124 Cal.App.4th 1522 (2004), food labeling violations under California statutes and the federal National Labeling and Education Act, and a claim based on an allegedly illegal rebate program operated by one of the nation's leading software companies. In addition to his consumer rights practice, Mr. Vendler has a long history of representing private clients, including: Forest City Enterprises, a $7.8-billion company recently rated by Fortune magazine as the top publicly traded real estate company in the United States; Fred Sands Realtors in several sick building/toxic mold claims (see FSR Brokerage, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2002 WL 560983) and a number of insurers in complex insurance coverage actions against fortune 500 companies, including Pfizer for its indemnity and defense costs in the Bjork-Shiley heart valve litigation and Bechtel for its expenses defending a mass tort claim involving toxic exposure to workers. See Bechtel Petroleum Operations, Inc. v. Continental Insurance Company, et al., 117 Cal. Rptr. 2d 399 (2002). Mr. Vendler has published numerous articles in several periodicals, including in the National Law Journal and Federal Lawyer. Mr. Vendler has a wife who is also a lawyer, two children and he enjoys driving old cars and playing basketball. He is active in the Harvard Radcliffe Club of Southern California and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Northeast Renaissance Corporation, a non profit organization debticated to neighborhood improvement.

Firm Members: Richard Nakamura, Jr.