Randolph Gaw

Randolph Gaw

Summary

Randolph Gaw founded Gaw | Poe LLP and has been practicing law since graduating in 2002 from Stanford Law School with his co-founder Mark Poe. He has been a first or second-chair of at least ten different trials and arbitrations and has obtained verdicts, judgments, or arbitration awards in those matters valued at over $70 million. He has also been appellate counsel of record on eleven appeals and writ petitions to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or the California Court of Appeal and prevailed in most of them.

Prior to co-founding Gaw | Poe LLP, Mr. Gaw spent more than ten years of litigation practice at international law firms O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Mr. Gaw has been named a Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a trial lawyer honorary society where fellowship is by invitation only and is limited to less than one-half of one percent of American lawyers. Mr. Gaw was also recognized as a Super Lawyer™ for Northern California in 2018-2024, and as a Rising Star™ for Northern California for 2016 and 2017, by Super Lawyers magazine.

While at Stanford Law School, Mr. Gaw was a member of the winning team in the moot court competition and also won the award for giving the best individual oral argument. Before attending Stanford, Mr. Gaw graduated from U.C. Berkeley with high distinction with a degree in political science and economics.

Education

Professional Activities

Representative Engagements

• AdTrader v. Google (N.D. Cal.). Lead trial counsel in putative class action brought on behalf of Google advertisers alleging that Google failed to issue them refunds for invalid ad traffic. 18 months into the lawsuit, Google announced its intention to issue approximately $75 million in refunds to one of the proposed advertiser classes for previously unrefunded invalid ad traffic. The case was resolved with a court-approved class settlement of $7 million.
• Confidential arbitration (AAA). First-chair in arbitration involving a dispute between the founder of a successful startup and his former company over a stock repurchase and the startup’s refusal to indemnify the founder in connection with a related third-party lawsuit. The arbitrator issued an award worth more than $10 million in favor of our client.
• Galic v. Goodenbour (S.F. Sup.) First-chair in a nationally publicized personal injury jury trial involving claims brought by former college basketball players against their coach and school for persistent emotional and verbal abuse. Unanimous jury verdict awarded our client $750,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.
• Donald Okada v. Mark Whitehead (C.D. Cal.). First-chair in jury trial involving dispute between former real estate partners. Unanimous jury verdict awarded our client over $500,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, ratified the legality of certain actions taken by him worth approximately $1 million, and denied recovery on any of the defendant’s $7 million worth of counterclaims.